breakpoint HR

HR routine, German culture and catchy subject lines

2012-01-24T14:20:00.000-08:00

Ever since, I also blog on career-related topics, I visit portals and read other blogs related to career, cv and cover letter writing, job hunt, etc as well. Karrierebibel is one of the premiumhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif addresses for that matter. Often ahead of the times as the recent blog shows.

The author pledges use of marketing or "catchy" phrases in the subject line of an application email sent by candidates. He suggests that subject lines are the opportunity to make the first impression on HR or hiring manager and hence should be written in a way that it attracts their attention and makes them interested in a candidate. He calls for abandonment of uniform subject lines (e.g. key account manager application) in favor of "catchy" phrases meant to emanate self-confidence and interest (e.g. your next key account manager).

Agreed. But yet disagreed.

Indeed, writing „application” in the subject line is boring. Especially, as application by e-mail are usually sent to an e-mail-address exclusively established for this purpose. On another hand, lucky those HR departments that receive applications with subject lines that include the position name. Those getting a reference to the job ad as well should consider themselves twice as lucky.

Disagreed because the advice misses the reality check with the HR routine. A few beliefs:
* HR folk like any other people like to have it simple, informative and to the point.
* HR appreciates candidates who make their life easy. One of the recruiters job is to keep track of applications received and there is nothing more annoying than not instantly knowing what position a candidate is applying for.
*“Catchy” lines make recruiters job cumbersome and get the job seeker the wrong kind of attention. Super out-of-the-box applications also in terms of subject line are usually a turn-off.
* Efforts put in phrasing subject lines go unnoticed as long as e-mail-applications are printed which I believe is still a common practice in German SMEs.

The advice is also disconnected with the German culture. German job seekers still struggle to make good advertisement for themselves in cover letters or show their motivation to do the job for the employer in question. They are culturally not programmed to show self-confidence. Americans are. Yet, a quick review of career advice sites in English shows that the majority recommends to refrain from marketing-like subject lines. Instead, they promote simplicity: Name, Position, Job Ad ID.
Notably, candidate’s name in the subject line is particularly of benefit, when HR forwards the short-listed applications to the hiring managers electronically.
Next, some folk suggests trying to stand out in the crowd of applicants by adding one of the following besides Name, Position, Job Ad ID:
* Putting the addressee’s name at the beginning of the subject line.
* Adding credentials behind once name
* Adding total number of years of experience
* Adding very unique and specialized skill

Lastly, whether marketing-like phrases can add to the success of a job application probably depends on the industry, which the author did not give any consideration to. For application in ad agencies, some creativity is beneficial for sure. For more conservative industries, keeping it simple should remain the rule.

***
My research shows that out of 2000 recent applications received at my current employer, only one candidate utilized the wording “gesucht? gefunden!!!” in the subject line. Needless to say: She did not get the job.

This blog refers greatly to the comments left by LinkedIn members.

Marketing instrument by HR service provider, Randstad

2011-11-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

As buyers of human resource services, human resource professionals are pampered with diverse give-away articles. Cups, pens, notepads, key rings and chocolates are the most frequent promotional items brought to business meetings by recruitment agencies’, hr software providers’ and other service companies’ representatives.

All those items are meant to deepen customer contact, combined with the aim to generate customer loyalty. They give not only eye contact with the service provider, but present something "tangible" in the hand.

Towards the end of the year, Randstad, the second largest HR services provider in the world, implements personalized calendars as their marketing instrument which reminds that b-2-b is done by individuals and not businesses. Check a few pages below:

This calendar definitely increased my attention far more than any other promotional item. And as a person making buying decisions, I am precisely the target group. Usability of calendar and maximum individuality is given. Furthermore, the calendar does not only become a possession but a memorable "gift" with a high potential to strengthen word of mouth. Randstad successfully conveyed the feeling of being cared for individually by their company as a customer.

Well done!

English Job Titles

2011-09-13T00:58:00.000-07:00

Job ads are the most classical example for the intersection of human resources and marketing disciplines. Every day, human resource professionals are challenged with the task to phrase job titles in such a way that they catch job seekers attention and push the job ad to the top of search results in the job boards.

In non-English speaking countries like e.g. China, Germany and Poland, using English job titles is a common strategy to overcome this challenge. This recent practice goes however beyond the linguistic borrowings known in the past due to industrial developments. Consider for example the job title stewardess. As the passenger air traffic emerged, human resource professionals in different countries opted for the loanword to lessen pressure to come up with a suitable name in their local language quickly. In Polish, we adapted the word to Polish rules of job titles and still call a woman working in this profession a "stewardessa". In German, after years of using the English title, the new German title of "Flugbegleiterin" is now widely used, especially to underline the safety aspect of the role. Interestingly, the original English word has been replaced by newer job titles such as “flight attendant” or “cabin crew”.

But, how is then the today’s use of English job titles different?
Well, first, English job titles are being used for established professions for which local language equivalents exist. This has been often done by multinational companies implementing global HR agendas with standardized positions and hence position names. Secondly, by using English job titles companies hope to increase the value of jobs and thereby attract talent more effectively. This is especially true for less attractive positions accordingly to the job board Talent Frogs. Their research found out that 34 per cent of 865 job ads analyzed referred to jobs in lower salary range or primarily on a commission basis. Third, on the opposite, English job titles and for that matter the entire job ads phrased in English aim for discouraging applicants unable to understand them, provided high command of English is essential to the job duties. In similar fashion, German companies occasionally post job ads in German in China or Poland.

In order not to intimidate the job seekers, human resource professionals may be using following advice to guide their approach to using English in the job ads in non-English countries:
* Find a real good reason why to use a foreign language in your job ad,
* Prioritize understandability over commercialization,
* Do not assign job titles based on the fact that they sound nice,
* Phrase the job title in the way that it reflects key duties,
* Do not confuse the applicants, if the role does not foresee any direct contact with the customers do not call the position customer representative,
* Accurately describe the job itself,
* Avoid unnecessary sales talk,
* Invite job seekers to contact human resource department to inquire about the specifics of the position to alleviate their lack of understanding,
* Measure the performance of your job ad.

Last but not least, keep in mind that the most applicants do not appreciate English job titles accordingly to recent research by monster.de. Some 42 per cent of 2394 candidates interviewed in Germany consider using Anglicism as annoying and unnecessary. Only 10 per cent believe that they ease the communication.

Social Interview

2011-08-31T12:56:00.000-07:00

The following case study shows how to recruit social media savvy minds.

The Social Interview is a new kind of job interview. Questions posted e.g. on the Facebook wall are not for candidates to answer, but for their friends to answer.

Customers’ Feedback as a Component of Performance Appraisal

2011-05-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

Feedback is an important component of performance appraisal. Involving customers in performance appraisals remains however a rarity in Germany. Generally, customers are also not involved into performance management.

Scouting China or Poland for that matter shows however a handful of examples how a feedback on customers representative performance can be an integral part of any interaction with the client. Banks clientele can assess tellers on a three point scale using a feedback devise right at the counter. Similar machines are placed next to immigration officers at Hong Kong borders. Next, some restaurants are fitted with communication devises with the staff including commands such as “We’d like to order”, “Please bring me some water”, “We’d like to pay” and “I enjoyed eating here today”. Furthermore, a feedback on a five point scale via text message is sought by travel sites after every call with the hotline representative. In Poland, the largest polish job board is bringing direct customer feedback into B2B world.

After posting an ad, one is asked to provide an assessment of cooperation with the sales representative.

The rating system has a high relevance to all client facing roles. As any other performance appraisal system, customer feedback must be linked to rewards. Otherwise, the process lacks impact. However, multiple advantages of customers’ ratings exist:
* Applying customers’ ratings at the point of contact produce reliable and consistent measurement of performance.
* The customers’ rating system is especially valuable to the employees’ development and satisfaction as it allows setting up objective goals more easily.
* It provides a simple format, it is brief (not time-consuming), easy to understand, and elicit useful information (customers’ satisfaction level with the service).
* It is designed to provide timely, impersonal and regular feedback, so that the employees can immediately know how their work is perceived by the customers.
* Employees can directly adjust their behavior to costumers’ expectations, thereby influencing the ratings.

As more and more, human resource professionals consider themselves in service to the internal clients, I wonder either they would welcome such feedback loop every time they deliver the service to company’s employees and managers.

Application Feedback

2011-04-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Research done by Shaker Consulting Group shows that all candidates despite their potential to hire have the same expectations in terms of information received about their application process. The key questions rated as critical need to know (by 80% or more of the survey respondents) include:
1. Do you receive my application?
2. When will I hear back from you?
3. Have I been knocked out of the process?
4. What is the time frame for filling the job?
5. What is the next step in the process?
6. Has anyone actually looked at my application?
7. Where am I in the process?

Human resource departments can extend some common courtesy by meeting the timeline expectations of the candidates.

A good way to do so is informing the candidates electronically
* when the company will be in contact with the selected candidates
* when the interviews will be held, or
* when it is planned to fill the job.

The information can be placed in the job ad or email correspondence to the candidate (with help of auto-response functionality) or in application process overview when utilizing online application tools.

A standardized note suffices
* We reserve the right to contact selected candidates no later than DATE.
* Interviews for candidates advancing in our process will be conducted by DATE.
* This position will be filled by DATE.

Leaving an applicant without any sort of response is a no go.

You can call me Jack

2011-03-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

When speaking with someone formally or informally in English, the “you” is used and there is no other alternative. The only difference is how the person can be addressed, for example, "Mr. Smith" or "Dr. Smith" or “Jack”.

German language differentiates between the formal (duzen) and informal (siezen) communication. Traditionally, the formal way was reserved for professional and business settings. Nowadays however, colleagues increasingly tend to be on a first-name basis even as communication with the customers remains formal at all times. Businesses often go about it without any policy while human resource departments swing back and forth between formal and informal communication. Hence even with a single company, an employee can experience the following throughout the employee life cycle:

* Formal (intending to exhibit professionalism) and informal (trying to attract youngsters) job ads
* Formal candidate communication
* Informal communication from the moment of contract signing to voluntary departure
* Formal communication in warning and dismissal letters

So, deliberately or not, the choice of communication mode depends on the message. As consistent communication fosters development of trust and creates a level of loyalty to the employer, companies should align the way to address their people, i.e. have guts to address informally any candidate (a stranger at first) despite how senior they are in their careers or any employee to be dismissed. It is just too ridiculous to call an employee by name when they are good employees, but go over to communicating with them formally once problems occur.

Failure to instill a consistent communication has a detrimental impact on the business as a whole, and makes very difficult to retain and nurture employees.

Job Titles to attract Career Changers

2011-02-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Talent shortage pushes recruiters to seek talent in other industries then their own. Niche job boards enable them to do it effectively.

With the recent job ads, Enterprise, a car rental company, seeks talent with hospitality background for their management training program. Enterprise looks for qualities associated with hospitality industry such as high service attitude, guest care skills and experience in ensuring customer satisfaction.

What makes the ad different? Well, it is their job title.

A high level of attractiveness of a job title is one rule of thumb when phrasing successful job ads. Candidates are attracted to jobs that have titles they aspire to, present some sort of professional enhancement, possibly are higher in the job hierarchy or simply are associated with a greater status (e.g. personal assistant as opposed to secretary).

Enterprise’s job titles is not a “next role” that candidate might be interested in, but precisely candidate’s “current role” or generally her educational background. Enterprise attracts attention by easy identification among their intended audience (“this is me” instead of “could this be me”). The job ad itself plays on a common note, suggesting a poor satisfaction with the current role, and hopes to motivate the candidate to change their career.

German versus Hong Kong Recruitment Practices in Comparison

2010-09-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

A few recruitment manners practiced by Hong Kong recruiters can be missed when relocating back to “continental” Europe (I write continental as I believe most of those practices are of British origin and hence also in use on the Islands).

Hong Kong recruiters prefer chats in informal settings and strengthening their network. The former one manifests itself in the invitations such as “Lets meet at Starbucks”, the latter one in connect requests “Join me on LinkedIn”.

Hong Kong recruiters simply love to meet the candidate for the first time in a coffee shop. They seldom take any notes focusing on casual chats about the candidate’s approach to life and his/her profession. Indeed, candidates tend to be more relaxed and at ease in this informal setting.

Such meetings are then followed by the invitation to connect via social networks such as LinkedIn. Particularly recruiters recruiting HR professionals realize that today’s candidate can be the client of tomorrow.

Instead, German recruiters prefer the meeting rooms of their companies and limit the interaction to the email exchange.

There is not such thing as Micky Mouse Job

2010-05-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Even simplest jobs require consistent execution. Consistency is one of the greatest challenges for any business. The larger the business the greater the challenge. While customers increasingly call for great service anytime, everytime; businesses can still get away with mediocrity. McDonald’s and Subway are only two examples. Both makes you wonder what are the official standard procedures.

Mc Donalds‘ soft cones sometimes come with two twists, sometimes with three. Sometimes, the cone is fully filled with ice cream, sometimes it is just above the waffle. Sometimes, the ice cream is watery and less sweet, sometimes, creamy and sweeter.

Subway delivers even more diverse experience. The number of any countable ingredient such as ham or tomato slices differs even when not being subject to individual preferences and wishes. Sometimes, the more I talked with staff the greater amount they gave me. Other times, the more I talked, the less I received. The biggest surprise happened at one Arizona Subway restaurant where two employees have trained a newbie in making a sub. The instruction was more or less like this: If the customer is nice, talks to you and is generally a kind person, you take the tomato and you give him the inner parts of it. If the customer is not nice, you give him the endings. Importantly, Subway’s employees also vary greatly in passion for what they do, some put heart into every sandwich, others seem just not very comfortable working when everybody watches their hands.

What’s behind those inconsistent experiences? Undefined quality standards, lack of commitment to excellence, poor supervision, unfair franchise‘ owners attempting to cut corners, boost margins and what not or just the nature of humans that no recruitment, training nor human resource policy can 100% restrain.

Job Swap Practical Considerations

2010-04-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Job swaps are expensive, in terms of money spent and HR department time. To ensure that they present the best development opportunity, a various issues shall be carefully considered.

Per definition, the job swap requires that job swappers swap jobs and hence are in similar position and have similar areas of expertise and experience in order to be able to cover each other position's workload while on exchange. However, the companies must also be clear about how the employee's workload will be handled during the job swap in the case employees cannot swap exactly the same positions.

At times, identifying job swap candidates along with client and language consideration might be a challenge. In regards to client, training intervention in form of a job swap creates a slight disturbance to the account service. The key account person is leaving and replaced by a new colleague with whom the Client has to yet establish a rapport. In regards to the language issue, while both potentials job swappers are most likely fluent in English, hardly anyone of them may speak the local language of the host company. Hence, the employee need to serve on a global account where English is the working language. Ultimately, companies need to determine the remaining recruitment criteria of job swappers.

Further factors to consider when planning a job swap include:
* What is the overall purpose, vision, and expected benefits of the job swap?
* How shall the job swap be evaluated and the benefits quantified?
* What are the obligations of each swap office?
* What shall be the financial arrangement? Shall job swappers be paid by their respective home or host swap office during the exchange? Which party shall be responsible for costs such as airfares, accommodation, travel and medical insurance, visas and work permits of each job swapper?
* Shall job swappers sign a “stay guarantee” (i.e. that they stay with the employer for a certain period of time upon completion of the job swap)?
* What are the work responsibilities of job swappers during the exchange?
* What additional training and opportunities for development shall be provided by host office?
* How shall job swappers be prepared for the intercultural experiences?

Behavioral Changes through Job Swaps

2010-04-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

Effective talent management depends on understanding the workforce, their desires and aspirations, and reconciling these with commercial and operational realities. One such desire of Chinese employees is the appetite for meaningful career advancement opportunities, not only in China, but also in the West.

Global job swaps are a unique opportunity for Chinese employees to gain first-hand experience with diverse business environments and cultures. Though, one cannot overlook the size of the investment a company needs to make to support such a program. Given the average training budget per employee per year, the job swap program costs (in particular as we only refer to one or a few job swappers) can be substantial.

Even so, in 2009, TBWA\China made an overseas assignment for one Chinese employee a reality. At the same time, the agency hosted a German employee in its office for the period of six months.

The 2009 job swap was kicked off as both agencies, in Shanghai and in Hamburg, saw the benefits that could accrue to the employees and the agencies from the exchange. Employees were provided with the opportunity to gain international exposure to a different business environment, insight into different cultures and societies, as well as the first hand knowledge of how other cultures approach agency operations and client relationships. Agencies expected to benefit by the ways of having more qualified and experienced staff who returns professionally inspired and equipped with a unique international perspective. Furthermore, agencies used the exchange to strengthen ties between them.

A questionnaire was distributed to job swappers to explore their self-assessment of the interpersonal and intercultural skills. Job swappers completed the questionnaire twice, first after the first 2 weeks of the exchange and second 2 weeks after the exchange was finished and job swappers returned to their home office.

Both job swappers agreed that they developed new skills during the job swap. They became more aware that they sometimes hear people, but they do not truly listen to what they are telling. They learned to strive to get the true message that people of different cultural background were trying to send, read between the lines, and pick up the non-verbal nuances. During the job swap, the job swappers developed into better listeners. Furthermore, job swappers got a better feel for empathy. They became skilled at putting themselves in another's shoes, an ability essential for account service professionals. These behavioral changes were the most realized personal development gains and advantages of a job swap.

"Family" as the Core of Corporate Culture

2010-03-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Family owned or operated businesses (private or public) and corporations with non-family members like to refer to themselves as a "family“ and this being the main building block for the corporate culture. You will hear and read, "we are like a big family" in their corporate literature, employer branding campaign, and from employee statements.

Whereas social and religious conservatives often use the term "family values" to promote a conservative ideology, businesses refer to "family" to demonstrate moving away from a command and control management approach.

In most instances however, organizations are selective about which elements of the "family values" they overtake and promote. More often than not, families are fueled by feelings rather than performance, forgiveness rather than accountability, and conformity rather than thinking outside-of-the-box. The problem for businesses is that sustainable organizations thrive on performance, accountability, and creative thinking.

Importantly as well, families tend to be hierarchical, particularly based on seniority, and instill self-control and moral obligations while demanding respect, discipline, and attentiveness. While the former is unavoidable, the latter is an ideal to strive for in the majority of organizations. Only the strongest cultures can however inspire and engage their employees.

Hence, the corporate concept of "family" primarily refers to how people communicate and interact internally. Associated beliefs include being loyal and trustworthy, caring for each other, and spending time together (including after work). In a way, being a "family" is a promise for a more supportive and less formal/cut-throat environment. In such organizations, employees know more about co-workers than they need to in order to perform well. They become pals.

Secondly, the "family" values in corporate context are particularly visible during two extreme stages of an employee's lifecycle; attraction (apparent in the employer brand promise of a compelling workplace) and separation (demonstrated primarily through alumni networks, e.g. BBH’s blacklist).

One final point, redundancy can become a major issue and limitation for the "family" concept at corporations. Though the concept of “family” differ across cultures, families around the globe have one thing in common, it is a bond that cannot be broken. When the family is struggling, family members are expected to hold things together and to help each other out. Excluding family members is taboo and hardly ever the question. Lay offs are common practice at many different “corporate families”.

Engagement at the Expense of Personal Time

2010-03-16T00:52:00.000-07:00

At Dun and Bradstreet, a great personnel policy aimed at protecting employees’ personal time has been introduced. Meetings cannot be scheduled on Mondays or Fridays if it requires people to travel over the weekend. This policy came into effect to demonstrate that the company cares and values people employees' free time .

In China such thinking is yet to come. Meanwhile, foreign companies like to promote the “work hard, play hard” philosophy expecting hard work and long hours as well as attendance of company organized “leisure activities”. After hours events are often an integral part of the company’s culture and engagement approach. In addition, managers sponsor these activities in order to improve team work and team spirit or to generally bring about more communication and friendships between foreign and local employees. Going out after work sometimes serves as a form of recognition for good team results.

After work socializing is often fueled by an expat manager's small circle of friends and lack of his/her family members in China. However, it is also sought out by Chinese employees as long as it is not too often and does not conflict with their private life such as the Friday family dinner. Eating together is a central element of Chinese culture and is considered a bonding endeavor.

Most of the time, departmental budgets support these activities. However, employees are sometimes expected to spend their own money. Since splitting the bill at the restaurant is fairly uncommon in China, each month a different team member may be expected to play the “host” and cover the evenings’ expenses.

Over time, many companies have started to realize that differences in taste between Expats and Locals cannot be successfully addressed during just one outing. As a result, some employees find excuses and do not attend . In turn, this low attendance causes a certain amount of resentment among management who feels that their generosity and efforts toward generating a "fun" workplace goes unnoticed.

Are the company activities after working hours really a payback employees expect?

More on Recruitment of Creatives

2010-03-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

At Powell's Books in Portland, I picked up a book entitled, “Pick Me. Breaking into Advertising and Staying There” by Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin, Chief Creative Officers at Ogilvy, Toronto. This book is a great resource for college advertising students and fresh graduates. I read the book looking for authors’ viewpoints on HR's role in an Agency.

Result: almost nil. HR had been reduced to in-house recruitment and external headhunting and by all means was not presented as a partner to the Creative Directors (CD) or a contact point for job seekers.

In the authors’ experience, “most of headhunters don’t know a great book from an okay one”. They further imply that in-house recruiters do not do their job right given that student “letters are getting lost in the big stack of mail that’s full of resumes".

According to Vonk & Kestin, headhunters can be, however, helpful in passing one’s CV to the CD and assessing what one is worth given their good understanding of salary benchmarks (p.77). But, they “don’t play much of a role in placing juniors” nor the very best creatives. The latter are “well known, and the CD often contacts them directly” (p.171). There were no good remarks on in-house screeners “a necessary evil at some big places” (p.44) either,

Instead, the authors suggest outsmarting HR. For example, the aspiring copywriter or art director should try to get the CD’s attention – the only decision maker while aspiring account service pros should approach the managing director (“Try sending the managing director of the agency a reel of your favorite spots with a smart list of reasons why you like them so much (heavy on references to good strategies and consumer insights)” p.126).

I am not going to cry for HR folks, but seriously where does it leave us? Is this industry-specific?

Year of the Tiger – HR Shift

2010-02-16T22:43:00.000-08:00

In Chinese zodiac, the year of the Tiger is traditionally associated with massive changes. To remain ahead of the game, here are a few ways that companies in Mainland China should consider:

1. Make a call for HR contribution to the organization’s productivity and capabilities. For most management teams, putting more emphasis on HR means realizing tangible and monetary deliverables. Reduction of recruitment costs seems to be the next and most relevant frontier. Building strong in-house recruitment arm with their own high caliber headhunters is financially sound, especially as recruitment fees to external recruiters have skyrocketed as talent is scare in China. However, this strategy does not solve the long term issue of developing talent and making it more effective. Net net, retention could be much cheaper than recruitment.

2. Shift focus on building talent. Long-term workforce planning involves identifying and nurturing junior talent particularly fresh out of college. The ‘big four’ and even some local Chinese companies realize the importance of an aggressive approach and surpass other people businesses in this respect. Each year in November these organizations put the senior students to a series of interviews and tests. Once this process concludes, employment contracts are signed and the "workforce newbies" are expected to start after their graduation in May of the following year.

3. Fill in your teamwork approach with substance. Pulling together as a team is a central element of motivational speeches by many companies’ leaders. However, bonuses tend to be based on individual performance and enormous discrepancies in pay tend to prevail. Both of them prevent employees from believing that everybody is "in the same boat". For all employees to feel valuable and more valued, status, pay, perks, and other privileges should be reviewed and according to Jeffrey Pfeiffer (1998, The human equation: building profits by putting people first) reduced. As an example, Whole Foods Market introduced a policy limiting executive compensation to ten times the average full-time salary of all team members; disruptive?

Culturally speaking, the concept of teamwork must also be reviewed critically in Mainland China. Surprisingly, current experimental research suggests that Chinese tend to avoid team-based performance measures and self-sacrifices in favor of the team. This goes to show that collectivism of Chinese culture does not automatically translate into cooperation and teamwork in the workplace.

4. Decentralize decision-making. The words “empowerment” and “to empower” are often misused. For example, companies believe that by having a suggestion box, employees will feel more empowered to put their ideas forward. Leaders also tend to believe that making the company’s proprietary tools available to employees and offering training so that employees can do their daily work constitutes empowerment. Well, empowerment is first and foremost about enabling non-managerial staff to make autonomous decisions without consulting their supervisor.

The best examples for empowering staff arise from the hospitality industry. Hampton Inn Hotel instituted a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee and thereby permitted employees to do whatever was required to make their guests happy (for example, giving money back for the cost of one night’s stay at the hotel should guests find shortcomings in service). At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, employees have the discretion to spend up to US$ 2,500 without any approval in order to respond to guest complaints. (Pfeiffer, 1998)

For those in "people" businesses in China, the question is what the scope of the decisions is and whether or not employees have the skills and knowledge to make those decisions.

Talent Challenges in China

2010-02-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

Once the hiring test is passed, working with Chinese employees presents other challenges.

Fragile Egos. Ba Ling Hou (the generation born in the 1980s) is the first Chinese generation after the introduction of the one-child policy. Growing up as the center of their family, these so-called “little emperors” are generally more self-centered and more individualistic than their parents. They tend to be less political than the older generation of employees and less receptive to hierarchy. However, this generation is more receptive and adaptive to Western style management. Those who gain a foothold in MNCs have oftentimes exceeded their peers in academic achievements and hence expect to win the race for higher pay, position, and title. These young Chinese employees are also smart, outgoing, and want to be independent. However, they did not necessarily learn how to cope with failures, exercise judgment, make decisions, and be a part of the team.

Unrealistic Expectations. Frequently, Chinese employees have high expectations and exhibit an attitude of “I disserve it” without reflection about their skills and abilities. Employees believe that they should be entrusted with interesting and challenging tasks, promoted, and offered better compensation and benefits packages at least on an annual basis. These high expectations are often fueled by open discussion and comparisons of their packages with colleagues, college peers, and friends. However, since status is very important in Chinese circles, a promotion or even a change in title without a change in duties can satisfy Chinese employees more than any other perk. But keep in mind that such promotions can backfire too. As a real life example, a 22 year old employee refused to report to a 25-year old manager with the argument that the manager was too young and did not know much more than the employee. The employee did not see how she could be successfully trained and mentored by a person from the same age group.

Weak Loyalty. In the US, the average length of time an employee stays in a job used to be five to six years. In China, it is two years. It is worst among Western trained and English fluent Chinese professionals who make "hopping around" from one international company to another a sport. Employees view employers as stepping stones to become more marketable in the future. As one applicant explained to me, referring to the question “How long do you envision yourself staying in this company?”,“The relationship between me and the company is give and take, if it works well for both of us, I’ll stay. If the company falls short, then I will need to leave”.

The Glass Ceiling. As much as employees desire to work for international companies, they perceive a glass ceiling in these organizations. Only a talent localization strategy can help eliminate employees’ fear of the “glass ceiling”. To execute it properly, coach-type Expatriates must be hired with the brief to share knowledge and mentor local staff.

What Vacation? The culture of a taking a vacation by Chinese employees is developing but is not there yet. Chinese prefer to take one day or even half-day annual leave on short notice with little consideration to work schedules, deadlines, and priorities as opposed to a vacation well planned in advance (as traditionally done in the West). Interestingly, annual leave is oftentimes used for interviewing at another employer. During my early consulting days, I was told that whenever an HP employee took leave on Tuesday morning; that meant they were interviewing at Microsoft.

The Weakest Link of a Customer Experience Team

2010-01-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

For several years now, in-house customer experience teams have been mushrooming in the corporate world. They are responsible for ensuring positive customer experiences with the company or its services and products. There is also no shortage of consulting companies that can provide such services.

The work of any customer experience team requires a holistic view on issues customers care about. Multidisciplinary in nature, the work of customer experience teams centers around soliciting customer feedback, codifying customer journeys, and adjusting processes, systems, and technology. In addition, understanding and redefining organizational culture and talent requirements is also vital to the teams’ efforts.

A great example of a customer experience team is the one set-up by American Airlines. Pretty much all of the team’s initiatives are talent focused. Consider:
• Controlling ground delays and better informing customers when unexpected delays occur;
• Smoothly and more efficiently processing customers when boarding aircraft;
• Improving interactions with customers (including for example a new staff performance requirement to greet first-class passengers by name); and
• Efficiently handling baggage and quickly resolving issues with misplaced or misdirected bags.

The emergence of customer experience teams is an interesting trend. Customer experience teams are overtaking HR departments in generating and acting upon customer literacy as popularized in the book by Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank, “The HR Value Proposition” (2005). As a result, the strategic contributions related to talent are now increasingly made outside of the HR department. Another trend is blending strategic HR and talent management with the authority of Chief Operations Officer.

Consequently, HR is increasingly losing (yet another chance?) edge to impact the people agenda whereas their administrative efforts only seem to increase day-by-day.

For HR to add value to the business:
• HR needs to be proactive in helping line managers build the organization's core capability;
• HR must contribute to strategic conversations; and
• HR must take a hold off and lead costumer experience teams (presently dominated by professionals with backgrounds in Operations, Marketing, and IT).

Hiring in China will test your patience

2010-01-05T10:15:00.000-08:00

China is a unique cultural experience and this definitely extends into recruiting and hiring. What you consider to be common sense will not necessarily occur. Your patience will be put to the test.

Job Advertisements. Since working for foreign companies is still considered prestigious, Mainland Chinese are more likely to respond to job advertisements in English than in Chinese; irrespective of their English skills. But even if candidates demonstrate a high level of English, they will spend little time to review job descriptions and job requirements and may only know that the company is an international player. Furthermore, Chinese applicants believe in a numbers game; the more companies they apply to, the more likely they are to land a job. So, leaders in their industry can literally be overwhelmed with totally irrelevant applications.

Employee Referrals. Chinese Employees are very keen to refer their friends and former colleagues to fill open positions. Most of the time, they will forward a Resume of active candidates who they know, but not necessarily someone who excels at any key skill for a particular role. Rewarding such referrals financially with an employee referral award is probably a nice gesture, but in this society seems to be obsolete.

Resumes. Chinese like to oversell their skills and exaggerate their experience and knowledge. In addition, the majority of Resumes and cover letters are poorly worded. External recruiters tend to copy and paste Resumes of their candidates on the recruitment agency’s letterhead thereby taking care of the formatting; however, syntax and grammar mistakes still appear often.

Interviews. More than a few Chinese candidates will not bring along any copies of their Resume and may not even have a pen and paper with them to take notes. Late arrivals and not knowing the name of the interviewer is common as well. Annoying as it sounds; Candidates in China tend to leave their cell phones on and will not hesitate to pick it up once it rings. Other question that one needs to answer when recruiting in China is whether or not to consider candidates who come late to an interview or cancel it with every possible reason.

Communication Skills. “What’s your strength?” is one of those question that deliver no real value in getting to know the Chinese candidates. Communication skills are quoted most. Too often, everyone assumes strong language skills equate to being an effective communicator. However, even the best linguistic capability does not make one the best communicator. As a hint then, check candidates' “presentation skills” because this may be a good indicator for how well they convey concepts and ideas.

Salary Negotiations. When asked about their desired salary during the interviewing process, it is usual for candidates to express their net salary expectations (after all taxes and other government mandated contributions are subtracted).

Offer Acceptance. When making a decision whether or not to accept an offer, Chinese candidates living with their parents frequently consult both mam and dad. Salary is often the sole variable, parents are interested in. It is usual, particularly in Hong Kong, to contribute around US$500 to the household by the offspring as soon as they get their first job. A comprehensive assessment of the employee value proposition is missing. I once had a talk with one of young potentials who intended to leave the Agency lured by a higher package and title by the competitor. Only after she realized that her new manager is inferior to her current one, she changed her mind.

Cultural Fit, What Rubbish!

2009-12-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

All companies probably believe that they must ensure "cultural fit" when hiring new people. However, too many players do not have strong cultures to speak off and are confused about the “best” talents that they require to successfully and meaningfully go through this exercise. Specifically, more often than not, companies:
1. Describe their cultures in similar ways; collaborative, entrepreneurial, and family-like. They also like to refer to themselves as complex, ambiguous, and challenging environments. Ad agencies in particular tend to identify their cultures with “chaos” which they embrace rather than try to tame by enforcing specific rules and structures.
2. Articulate the same values. A recent study by Ki and Kim (2009) showed that “respect to clients”, “service”, “strategic”, and “results” were the most frequently emphasized values among ethical statements provided by 605 public relations agencies in the United States. On the other hand, “balance”, “fairness”, “honor”, “social responsibility”, and “independence” were the least frequently mentioned values in their ethical codes. Surprisingly as well, none of the sampled agencies included any sanctions regarding enforcement of their particular code of ethics.
3. Remain misaligned when it comes to talent practices. It is not uncommon to find that employee policies and operational practices do not actually support their cultural statement (e.g. we are open-minded). At the extreme, employees that are in fact closest to the desired culture may not experience and receive sufficient recognition, advancement opportunities, and high job satisfaction levels.
4. Demonstrate "me-too" thinking when preparing talent policies, rewards, and benefits just like they go on the same mission relevant to their industry. Almost uniformly, ad agencies aspire to “generate big ideas” (award-winning ideas or outstanding advertising campaigns) and provide a full range of communications services for their clients.
5. Look for similar skill sets, knowledge, experience, and just about everything else when looking for talent; self-starter with a `can-do` attitude, ability to contribute to and lead diverse teams, ability to present logical and persuasive arguments, passionate, and driven, etc.
6. Settle down for generic and inclusive corporate cultures. Many employees cannot explicitly discuss and distinguish between the cultures of the companies that they have worked for. Worst, many successful careers can span a number of companies over several years which suggests that either employees are simply good chameleons and flexible and adaptive enough to blend in or that there is nothing unique and extraordinary about their different workplaces.

Hence, checking for cultural fit is of substance and should only take place if the company understands what their actual and desired organizational culture is, has low staff turnover, and is growing at a steady pace so as to ensure successful acculturation processes by new hires.

Performance Conversations

2009-12-08T05:29:00.000-08:00

One of the most important and original books of late regarding performance management is written by Christopher D. Lee, PhD, Performance Conversations: An Alternative to Appraisals (2006; published by Fenestra Books, Tucson, Arizona). The author thoroughly critiqued the performance appraisal tool and provided an alternative approach; Performance Conversations Model.

Having observed the book's core ideas implemented into a corporate setting in Mainland China, I would like to share some of the challenges that arose.

First, performance conversations created impractical employee expectations for receiving a raise or bonus after every performance conversation. But, since these conversations occurred on a quarterly basis, managers' obviously could not increase pay every 3 months for an employee even if they received positive feedback. So, employees invariably felt disappointed.

Second, performance conversations were too structured mainly because a form needed to be completed every time conversations occurred. In addition, many participants were not dedicated to maintaining a performance portfolio and performance log - a journal of duties, challenges, and solutions (the so called "evidence") on a daily/weekly basis. Indeed, this prerequisite was perceived as a burden by most and just additional paper work.

Third, performance conversation meetings did not seem to be the best platform for addressing inadequate performance. Inevitably, this model linked the quality of an employee’s output with the manager’s performance in accordance with the fundamental belief that an "Employee can only be as good as their supervision, support, and guidance". Therefore, the manager who assessed an employee's performance as poor would also need to acknowledge their own weaknesses and mistakes.

Fourth, performance conversations did not alleviate the need for an “evaluation” and consequently demand for 360 degree feedback in the organization intensified. Employees also wanted to be assessed against a set of performance criteria for their current position.

For the abovementioned difficulties, China as a whole is not ready for a performance management approach based on Theory Y of human motivation.

Can HR Recruit Creatives?

2009-11-24T22:34:00.000-08:00

HR departments in China are too often helpless when it comes to their capabilities to recruit Creatives. This failure results from the following issues:
1. Traditional HR departments take a passive approach and believe that Creative Directors prefer to screen creative staff themselves.
2. HR professionals do not invest the time to learn about and understand the market, advertising campaigns, and the people behind the scenes to really grasp how and what the artists' true contributions were and thereby make a proper skill assessment.
3. HR does not have an "eye for creativity" and is therefore unable to assess who has superior creative and design skills.
4. HR people are not trained in the Creative world and can not even differentiate between ATL, BTL, and digital works. If these are not clearly labeled, then they end up spamming Creative Directors' mailboxes with many inadequate candidates.

To change this defunct status quo, HR should:
1. Instigate the belief that HR’s assistance in the recruitment of creative staff is needed and necessary for Agencies to achieve their business objectives. Why else would Creative Directors brief HR on their staffing needs? HR must realize that Creatives have expectations and HR needs to deliver on them.
2. Achieve Partner status with the business, demonstrate an ongoing interest in the Creative process, learn more about specific campaigns (also the ones of from competitors), hold formal and informal meetings with all kinds of artists, talk with candidates about the different strategies and execution of successful campaigns, and recreate organigrams for project teams in target companies.
3. Develop into a learning unit. The department must comprehend inside and out Creatives' requirements, know what constitutes quality creative and design skills, and fully understand services offered by the Agency.
4. Have the drive to excel at this challenge thereby making everything aforesaid possible.

This being said, organizational support is also crucial to HR success in the recruitment of Creatives. An essential step to take is to invest more resources in the position of Recruiter by instituting greater financial incentives and designing an appealing career path to keep the "good ones" onboard. After all, they are the key to this entire process and Recruiters will need to be the ones to change their behaviors and learn more about Creative's and the "Arts".

General Manager – HR

2009-11-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

Last year, I wrote about the semantics in development of HR as a profession. 2009 emerged as the year of a new HR designation; namely, General Manager – HR (GM of HR Department, GM Admin & HR Department).

This new title sounds promising at the onset but after closer review of several GM - HR Job Descriptions, one can quickly realize that the responsibilities of the GM - HR are basically the same ones as that of any other HR Head focused on administration, statutory compliance, and the entire gamut of HR activities without explicitly calling for business, strategic, and team leadership.

Added analysis into the Job Requirements by any HR Business Partner advocate will further cool down their excitement toward this new title. After all, the new designation continues to demand excessive HR experience; particularly one of HR Generalist and only introduces one modern and advantageous requirement; an MBA.

In my view, introducing any new HR title is pointless and confusing unless the "core" of the position is new. The GM – HR role would be of greater substance if the primary responsibilities were:
• To run multiple HR departments as value creating centers for the different companies under one holding company,
• To optimize HR services, and
• To lead the alignment of HR strategy with the business strategy across the different companies.

Accordingly, the ideal candidate would then be required to have more of an entrepreneurial and business track record with either an operational background or extensive knowledge and an understanding of the business model of each company and the value drivers of each business.

Beginning a Career in the Creative Department of an Ad Agency

2009-10-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Concerning career opportunities for creative talent in Advertising Agencies in Mainland China, I am upbeat about their prospects. People with excellent creative thinking abilities, graphic skills, a strong work ethic, and client centric outlook will always jump ahead of the curve.

In the early stage of one's career, young designers should concentrate on enhancing their design skills, learning to manage time and project challenges effectively and efficiently, and demonstrating superb standards of quality on a consistent basis.

Given the fact that the vast majority of local designers have relatively weak conceptual and English skills, I would also suggest that young designers undertake a frank self-assessment and if needed, commit to devising and implementing a workable plan for personal improvement in these areas. A few tips include studying and practicing different kinds of art forms and actively engaging in brainstorming sessions.

Now, once a designer begins to climb the career ladder, they will need to demonstrate confidence and comfort with doing new things all the time and exemplify an attitude that embraces a variety of media; not only the traditional ones but also any imaginable space between the brand and its consumers.

When to Embark on a Career in the Account Service Department of an Ad Agency?

2009-10-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

This post addresses a recent enquiry from a young Chinese professional.

"After my graduation, I started working at a Company in their Marketing department. Now, after three years, I think that I would prefer to work in an Advertising Agency in the long-term. I heard that the most common career path is to first start out at an Ad Agency and then to switch to the client side. Do I still have the chance in an Advertising Agency?”

First, Advertising Agencies are constantly on the lookout for talent with the ability to establish strong relationships with colleagues and clients, quickly grasp an understanding of the Agency's processes and internal project management principles, and adapt to their matrix reporting structure and multidisciplinary nature of projects while working well in large teams. So, if you are this kind of person, then chances are good that you will get noticed.

Second, Advertising Agencies are oftentimes more demanding, ambiguous, and faster paced than in-house Marketing Departments. Many professionals also experience difficulty thriving in such an environment after spending too much time on the client side. Consequently, it is best for you to get your hands dirty at an Ad Agency as soon as possible.

At any career level, it is easier to exit an Advertising Agency and move to an in-house Marketing Department than vice-a-versa. But, the time spent in an Agency is always fruitful for one’s career in the Marketing field. It allows you to familiarize yourself with the Agency's processes inside and out and apply this experience in any future dealings with them. Agencies like to joke around that Ex-Agency staff makes for the worst most demanding clients.

How to Get an Advertising Career Going in Mainland China

2009-09-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

Over the last year, I received regular career inquires from (non-Asian) foreigners about job prospects in Advertising Agencies in Mainland China.

Clearly, many Agencies have switched to localization as their primary recruitment strategy because of high employment costs associated with foreign staff. However, these Agencies will still continue to hire foreigners because the local talent pool is too small and Agencies have demonstrated a strong reluctance to invest in and develop the local talent. Consequently, a gap and opportunity exists.

As a result, the odds of being hired are positive. But, there are several issues to be aware of:
1. Foreigners are seldom employed in positions lower than "Director" level. Thus, candidates should have enough experience and expertise to join at least at the level of an Account Director or Creative Director.
2. Multi-Media, Digital Marketing, and Integrated Campaigns are the current key words of the Modern Advertising World. So, if you are passionate about digital and have completed excellent digital work in the past, then highlight these points in your CV.
3. Foreigners are hired primarily because of their unique professional skill set and not their Mandarin fluency. Hence, starting to study Chinese should not be your "unique selling point" in your application. It will make your everyday life a lot easier in China though.
4. Almost always, hiring managers worry about an applicant’s lack of knowledge and experience in the Chinese marketplace. So, if you have already worked and/or lived in another country for some time and have shown flexibility and adaptability and proved intercultural awareness and interpersonal skills in the past, then emphasize these points. At the same time, you must allocate time to research, read, and learn about Chinese culture and the Chinese market; advertising campaigns, the players, etc.

Other things to consider include:
1. "Make a mark at home first" until you are in a higher level position and then look into being transferred within your Company to Mainland China as an Expat; it will be less frustrating and more financially rewarding.
2. Target smaller and faster growing international newcomers in Mainland China who do not have the budget or time to grow local talent and instead prefer to tap into a pool of highly qualified international talent.
3. Connect with Recruiters; introduce yourself, hear first hand current hiring trends, and get a few leads.
4. Arrive in Mainland China for a "trial period" and take on a few freelance projects. This approach will provide an opportunity for you to show your skills in practice and get a taste of what life is truly like here.
5. If you are a Creative, try to meet with a few Creative Directors for an informational interview and use this opportunity to show them your portfolio.

Lastly, if you have the desire to show up in Mainland China early in your career, then go for it but expect to receive dismal replies or minimal interest because of lackluster concern for green foreigners. Be also aware that compared with your home country, companies in Mainland China will likely offer you less mentorship and training opportunities and compensation. This is why you must consider the impact of coming here on your long-term career and personal goals. Finally, be willing to sacrifice on more than a few points to fulfill your dream of working here and have the endurance to stick around long enough until an opportunity opens up.

Critical Talent in Advertising Agencies

2009-09-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

Critical or strategic positions are positions that are essential for delivering the firm’s strategic capabilities. Critical talent therefore refers to the people who create the value that an organization needs to succeed. For example,
• In large pharmaceutical organizations, it is the researchers and clinicians who drive the development of “blockbuster drugs”.
• In the oil industry, it is the geologists and petroleum engineers who find and extract oil.
• In manufacturing, it is the machinists who perform precision manufacturing to Six Sigma standards.
• In retail, it is the inventory managers who get the right goods into the right stores at the right time.
• In a courier organization, it is the couriers who pick up and deliver packages.
• In a Disney amusement park, it can be the street sweepers who are in touch with millions of customers every year.

According to Becker, Huselid, and Beatty (The Differentiated Workforce), the process of identifying critical positions begins with two questions:
1. How will we compete (the firm’s strategic choice)?
2. What must we do exceptionally well to win (the firm’s strategic capabilities)?

For Advertising Agencies, the strategic choice (operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy) tends to be unclear whereas creativity is the most frequently referred to strategic capability.

Hence, for an Advertising Agency, Creatives (Copywriters, Art Directors, and Creative Directors) that are particularly exceptional in originating new concepts and ideas are the critical talent.
As a result and in line with Becker, Huselid, and Beatty recommendations, Creatives enjoy differentiated access to resources, development opportunities, and rewards. A few examples include:
1. When resources are short, there is usually an extra budget for a Freelancer to join a Creative team.
2. Account professionals are often told to keep Creatives' happy, inspire them, and make their jobs easier.
3. Creatives get to go to international Award Shows.
4. A Creative Director may receive as much as twice the money that an Account Director or Planning Director.

Do you know any Agencies that would perceive Strategic Planning or Account Servicing as their strategic capability? Are there any Agencies that would view their Planners (who devise the strategies for clients' brands) or Account Service staff (who have direct contact with the customer and must make continual decisions that impact not only the client's satisfaction but also the efficiency and effectiveness of the project's delivery) as critical talent?

A, B, and C Players (The Differentiated Workforce)

2009-09-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Adding on to my previous post on A, B, and C positions, here are some thoughts on the concept of A, B, and C players.

1. People believe that they give their best effort and deliver good performance. While self-confidence is abundant in China, self-awareness is scarce. As a result, staff has difficulty to realize that their performance is simply not good enough and hence often revert to blaming their Managers for partiality.

2. People prefer to be treated better than others or at least equally. Usually, high performers are proponents of high performance management systems, while low performers are against them. Nonetheless, when ambitions are incommensurate with skills, employees still expect healthy rewards. So the story goes, if you give one person a one month bonus, another person would expect a one month bonus as well. If you decide to recognize the two good performers out of three employees working in the same role, then you have a problem on your hands in China.

3. People will resign if they feel disappointed about the lack of appreciation/recognition or dissatisfied with staffing decisions. Resignations are an opportunity for the Company to upgrade the skills of their workforce. Though, in industries where most companies pursue stealing talent over training and developing it, one can find themselves without many Candidates to choose from. As talent is hard to find, it may be still better to have a poor/mediocre performer onboard instead of a vacant position. Then, a job done slower, less efficient, or with less quality is still better than no output at all.

4. People tend to be very protective of one another. Employees tend to be immune toward the weak performance of colleagues, particularly if they maintain a close social relationship. Thus, for some staff, execution alone and showing up to work already constitutes good performance. Consequently, performance-based terminations are viewed as a display of lack of sympathy toward the fired individual and not a result of their poor performance.

Finally, several questions arise regarding the implementation of A, B, and C positions:
• As real people, individuals have a high self-concept. How do you go around labeling someone a C player?
• Top talent wants to team up with top talent. Do A players really want to collaborate with B or C players (since A players in B and C positions are not affordable)? How do you keep A players motivated when you ask them to work together with B or C players as in this example, Creative Director (A player) works with relatively junior Account Service team challenged by high turnover rates and low professional capabilities?
• Can your company outsource all of the C positions?

A, B, and C positions (The Differentiated Workforce)

2009-08-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

In their latest book, “The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent into Strategic Impact”, Huselid, Becker, and Beatty continue to promote differentiation as the key to successfully managing the workforce. In particular, they suggest that managers and HR pros identify truly strategic roles in their businesses and then focus on managing the variability in employee performance (A, B, and C players).

Identifying strategic roles might be a challenge for many companies that have traditionally tended to label senior jobs as such and instituted differentiated pay, development opportunities, and working conditions. Standard perks to underline the importance of those strategic roles have included assigned parking spaces, training retreats, and enclosed office spaces (or at least “wooden” floors as opposed to linoleum).

It goes to show that companies have also been successful in differentiating between front line and back office employees. After all, the lack of a direct link to business strategy and focus on servicing “internal customers” has created many opportunities for underinvestment in Traditional HR, Admin, IT, and Finance. For example:
• Physical isolation from the revenue departments. Did you ever need to walk through a dark corridor or turn your hips to make your way between cabinets to reach the HR or IT department?
• Second-hand equipment and furnishings. Did you ever see back office staff sitting at their old desks and on their old chairs even after the Company’s move to a new office whereby everyone else received new stuff?
• Unsophisticated and uninspiring interior design. The grand lobbies and waiting areas abound and at the same time 2m by 2m cubicles for sales professionals have defined “what’s normal” in corporations worldwide. But, did you ever leave behind the brightly painted walls in the front office area and step into the grey painted world of the back office?

While no changes are to expect for back office (sorry if I am too pessimistic here), front line should be reshaped by the new kind of differentiation. Companies should differentiate between positions based on their strategic significance while recognizing that an entry-level, customer-facing position may be more strategic than the obvious C-suite jobs. I am looking forward to more progressive HR departments' that not only intend to create a workforce that competitors cannot easily copy but also guide this process forward.

Improving Recruitment Work

2009-08-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

For recruiting the "best" talent, good is never good enough. Continuous improvement is mandatory to outsmart the competition. There are several key points to evaluate and redesign for greater in-house recruitment results. These include:

Industry Knowledge – If the recruiter fails to name the company’s competitors, is unable to describe the service offerings inside and out, or misunderstands competency models, then their performance will suffer. To close this sort of gap, the recruiter must, for example, research the industry, browse the company’s website, review all marketing collaterals, and talk to colleagues just about everything concerning the Company.

Recruitment Channel Management - Recruitment channel management entails tracking, analyzing, and forecasting application and candidate flows from all internal & external recruitment channels. It helps the HR department to evaluate channels, allocate their recruitment budget, and make more informed decisions. Therefore, recruiters should collect data on how candidates find out about open positions and look for correlations between the channels used and performance of new hires.

Candidate Sourcing – In-house recruiters tend to prefer and rely on screening over sourcing. After all, being reactive is much easier than being proactive. Nonetheless, recruiters need to overcome their barrier to cold calling and ask every candidate for a candidate referral.

Interview Skills – Hiring managers and even recruiters are often untrained to perform meaningful job interviews and as a result are frequently anxious about making a poor and expensive hiring mistake. During the interview, interviewers should try to get to know the person instead of just verifying information on the CV. Importantly, an interview is the recruiter’s chance to voice their major concerns and have them addressed by the candidate. In a talent short market, recruiters must unequivocally identify candidates that will deliver stellar performance and not ones that look good on paper. Thus, instead of looking for reasons to reject the candidate, try to find reasons why the candidate could be a good hire.

Candidate Assessment/Evaluation – More often than not, hiring managers and recruiters settle down for intuitive hiring decisions based on "gut" feeling and employment history. Surprisingly as well, references are not checked regularly in China and therefore may lead to hiring candidates for positions (or even higher) that s/he has already been fired at. Furthermore, a recruiter's reliance on the candidate's experience and having done it before can be ill-advised since it does not necessarily mean that the candidate knows how to do it right.

Report Design and Analysis – Since statutory reporting does not apply to soft HR, report design and analysis has been quite a sluggish and underdeveloped art. To start, HR pros need to determine:
• Which metrics help them the most to guide execution of the business strategy,
• Which parameters can be constituted as key performance indicators,
• Which items can ensure high quality of the recruitment process, and
• Which points will demonstrate the strengths of the company as an employer in the talent market.
Examples worth considering include:
• Percentage of candidates considered high performers after 3 months.
• Number of cold calls made, how many CVs were secured, and how many interviews were held per week.
• Diversity as a measure of candidate quality.
• Percentage of candidates that come from key competitors.

Company Culture Promotion – Company culture promotion starts by posting a recruitment advertisement and for hired candidates it never stops. In China, trying to learn about the company culture in an interview setting is sometimes just impossible. The recruiter may not be able to deliver a meaningful introduction about the company's services, clients, mission, and values either. It is vital then to take the time to prepare the recruiter fully and check their work and progress regularly to “keep them on their toes".

Team Work – The greatest inefficiency of the recruitment function is the lack of team work and closed down communication. What happens is that a recruiter keeps searching for a candidate even though the position has been either put on hold, cancelled, or a suitable candidate was already identified by the hiring manager but the recruiter was never informed (even though the HR Manager was). This sort of process is embarrassing, confusing, and highly inefficient. Making sure that everyone is abreast of the latest is the prerequisite for HR to look competent.

Creative Tactical HR

2009-07-21T01:50:00.000-07:00

In his book, “Disruption Brought Order”, Jean-Marie Dru (2007, pp. 44-45) suggests that talent is not enough when thirty second commercials are made. Advertising people need to perfect their techniques by immersing themselves into cinema culture and constantly watching advertising commercials and movies. Also, Patricia Smith (1998, "Instructional Design", p. 4) argues that instructional designers become more creative in their work by voraciously consuming examples of instructional materials.

So, creators must acquire deep knowledge in order to be "creative". The more they study, read, and build up their knowledge, the more they can create something new. The argument is that you can not think outside the box unless you have seen a lot of boxes! Thus, creativity is a function of knowledge. And the best ideas are often the simplest.

For HR pros, all of this means that they need to study best practices and be on the lookout for original HR practices, HR function approaches, and benefits.

A few simple HR examples in practice in China include:
• The Innovation Company: New staff is introduced with an A4 profile page (pictures and 10 things about the newbie) placed in places where people take a short break such as pantries and washrooms.
• Saatchi & Saatchi: Pictures of staff are displayed in the lobby area.
• JWT: A fruit platter is given to staff after lunch everyday to refresh them.
• DDB: A theatrical "What's on Today" sign with the names of new employees welcomes newbies on their onboarding day at the Company's entrance.

Lastly, a few ideas that are not in practice include:
• Offer education leave.
• Convert untaken sick leave into planned annual leave.
• Provide medical insurance for parents, spouses, and children.
• Give employees a choice of perks and benefits, i.e. for every item you offer have at least two choices.
• Design a gratuity scheme (extra cash upon completion of the contract so as to ensure a stability of the team).
• Sponsor a “Guest Book” in the waiting area for Job Candidates to share their impressions, expectations, and thoughts.
• In Shanghai or Beijing, provide free accommodations for staff living far away from the Company to reduce long daily commutes in these enormous cities.

Do you have any more examples and ideas? Please feel free to share.

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

2009-07-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

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.

HR Dilemmas

2009-06-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

A high performance culture is sought after but promotions for key positions regularly arise because of politics instead of contributions.

Teamwork is encouraged and expected but the company operates in an individual-centric manner.

The company prioritizes promoting from within but there has been no succession planning with corresponding leadership and develop programs.

The company strives to minimize recruitment fees to search firms but does not develop adequate in-house recruitment capabilities.

The CEO pledges to provide 30-40 training hours annually per employee but the CFO institutes stringent guidelines to greatly minimize training expenditures.

HR staff is expected to shift from an operational expert to human capital partner but has not received additional training to learn new skills necessary to succeed in these new roles, i.e. translating customer expectations into employees’ behavior, executive coaching, data analysis, etc.

The company states "who we are" in all marketing collaterals but is unable to cascade this knowledge to all management levels; hence employees provide a lot of different answers as to what the corporate culture is.

The organization encourages staff to provide constant feedback but does not support application of tools (e.g. organizational climate surveys) to capture feedback systematically.

People are expected to think and act on-the-spot but there is a strong autocratic decision making process that does not empower people to take charge.

The company complains about the lack of talent but perceives any initiatives to enlarge the talent pool as too costly.

The organization recognizes Human Capital Management as highly essential and at the center of it all but places the HR team in some odd corner of the office with minimal visibility.

The HR Director is under every increasing pressure to demonstrate quick manpower results but does not have the authority to reward/penalize managers who exhibit exceptional/pathetic people management skills.

The HR Director must champion change and push forward the "people's" agenda but is too often one of the last to know about major changes and problems and is not kept "in the loop" until when all hell breaks loose.

How do you know that your HR Head knows your business?

2009-06-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

During one of the recent HR forums, it became apparent that “knowing the business” has become a chief mantra of HR Heads in China. It is one of the prerequisites for getting a "seat on the board" and being recognized as a Business Partner by business managers.

So, what does it mean for the HR Head to “know the business”? Well, it means that he/she can answer the following questions:
• Who are three of our competitors and what are their competitive advantages?
• Who are the five major buyers in the markets that we serve?
• Which customers represent 80 percent of our revenues and profits?
• Whom do the customers perceive as "best" in our industry?
• Why do our target customers buy from us? What are their buying criteria?
• What are our future customers' needs and expectations?
• How do we ensure that our target customers have a positive customer experience?
• What do we do to build connectivity or intimacy with our target customers?
• Can you describe the culture of our organization?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of our organization?
• What are the economic, social, political, and technological influences that affect our industry?
• What future risks is our organization facing?
• What are the opportunities for the organization?
• What is the financial performance of our company and how has this changed over the past three years?
• Can you read a profit and loss statement?

Even if the HR Head can answer all of these key questions, it is still very important for them to apply this knowledge to their HR strategy and programs and to ensure proper execution with their HR team.

Recruitment Strategy and Execution

2009-05-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

In-house recruiters in China aspire to do more and more strategic work while their individual execution is far from desirable. However, only a properly executed recruitment strategy will ensure a pipeline of high-quality Candidates and availability of helpful data for the HR team to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness of the department’s resource allocation.

Thus, recruiters must realize that in order for them to contribute to strategic decision making and an assessment of the recruitment strategy, they must start excelling at the execution role. To guide in-house recruiters on a path to success, ask them to incorporate the following activities in their daily work:
• Using established protocols in conducting recruitment.
• Observing all recruitment procedures rigorously.
• Assuring consistent collection of information.
• Maintaining cold call logs.
• Gathering and documenting all referral forms regardless of outcome.

After all, without sufficient and up-to-date information, strategic questions such as the ones listed below cannot be answered satisfactorily:
• Are we reaching the right talent?
• Are we in the right place?
• Is the right message being delivered?
• Are we delivering the message in the right manner?

Any strategy without proper execution is meaningless. In the same light, execution without a strategy is a mess.

Recruitment Strategy

2009-05-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

A well-tuned recruitment strategy plays an essential role in improving and pushing overall performance. Hence, companies must invest sufficient time and resources to plan, implement, and assess their recruitment endeavors.

To formulate an effective recruitment strategy, take into account the following issues:
Target Group: Who is being targeted through the recruitment? What kind of Candidate is required?
A few suggestions:
• Hire from outside the industry on a routine basis for all levels.
• Hire Entrepreneurs to reinforce an entrepreneurial spirit.
• Hire Professors during slow periods of the academic year to bring in forward thinking approaches and systems.
• Hire people from the military or police for positions that require consistency, efficiency, and follow-through.
• Go after talented people that are considered non-traditional talent such as retirees, part-timers, and stay-at-home mothers.
• Introduce the usage of interim management to bring in fresh perspectives, unbiased advice, and top talent for tackling specific project challenges.

Advertising: Where should recruitment information be posted and distributed? Which channels should be used in regards to the different positions?
A few suggestions:
• Diversify recruitment channels.
• Assess the costs of each recruitment channel against the number of applicants, number of applicants hired, and number of high performers onboard.
• Standardize design formats for online and offline recruitment advertising.

Recruiters: Does the company have top-notch recruiters? What skills do in-house recruiters need to be more effective?
A few suggestions:
• Hire staff that are passionate about the recruitment profession and not people that view it as a stepping stone to the HR Manager position.
• Hire researchers/junior consultants from recruitment agencies.
• Reward recruiters in proportion to the value they create. Every time an in-house recruiter is used instead of an executive search firm, the company achieves significant savings.
• Keep recruiters busy with recruitment work only.

Selection process: What is the recruitment process in detail from start to finish? How many interviews should Candidates attend?
A few suggestions:
• Introduce role-plays in the selection process to see how Candidates react and think on the spot.
• Bring back the top 5 Candidates and have them work on a difficult team project for half-a-day; look to see what roles people flourish in and what the company's needs are.
• Ask Candidates to prepare a presentation or write a speech according to a brief to assess individual thinking style, communication skills, and persuasiveness.
• Test Candidates' creativity; this is all too often forgotten but is what every company is searching for in the battle to innovate. Also look for creative solutions that Candidates have contemplated and executed in their previous jobs.

CFO and HR Head Don't Mix

2009-04-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

There are many industries in China where the CFO prides him/herself with overseeing not only Finance and Accounting departments, but also the HR department, the Admin department, and the IT department. At the same time though, the CFO does not seem to be entirely responsible and accountable for the quality and results of the HR function and the HR team they assemble. This is the status quo and even the most creative companies will not disrupt this bizarre and ill-advised reality.

For a deep-seated change to arise, shareholders and the CEO must understand the significant price of entrusting a numbers cruncher with power and authority over an HR department that is expected to drive leadership development, talent management, and a high-performance culture. Major issues include:

1. Mediocre Leadership
The CFO rarely has the time to guide human capital management. As their title suggests, the CFO is consumed with finance and accounting matters of an organization.

It is difficult for the CFO to successfully balance finance/accounting and HR/talent as these are diverging activities and require different knowledge and skills. Furthermore, the HR team's effort to develop human capital of the organization (investment) clashes with the Finance team's focus on lowering expenses (savings).

2. Mediocre Framework
The CFO rarely has the know-how of human resources management in areas such as hiring and selection, staffing, training, organizational structure, and employee engagement to drive an organization's people agenda. So, the CFO tends to ask one-dimensional questions and therefore lacks a talent-oriented perspective in many HR matters. Consider the different perspectives of the CFO and HR Head on the following HR responsibilities:

Hiring and selection
• CFO: How much does it cost to get the Candidate onboard?
• HR Head: Does the Candidate have the skills and talents required to execute our strategy?

Staffing
• CFO: How large is the total workforce budget?
• HR Head: Which segments of the workforce create the value for which we are most rewarded in the marketplace?

Training
• CFO: How big is the training budget?
• HR Head: What training does the organization need to garner skills and talents to deliver our strategy and what skills will we need over the next five years that we do not currently possess?

Organizational structure
• CFO: Do we really need additional headcount, can 50 percent of our workforce work 15 minutes harder each day?
• HR Head: How can I help my people be more productive?

Employee engagement
• CFO: Who will pay for it?
• HR Head: What programs shall we institute to increase employee engagement and involvement?

Consequently, HR departments in China are left with no guidance in the War for Talent and instead continue to do what the CFO does best, ensure legal compliance, save money when hiring, rewarding, and terminating people, and above all, administer, administer, and administer.

3. Meager Commitment and Accountability
In their own choice of words, the CFO tends to separate him/herself from the HR department by referring to the HR team as "they" and not as "we". Furthermore, the CFO does not fully accept responsibility for the HR department's focus on lower-end HR tasks and does not see him/herself accountable for HR function's lack of skills and capabilities to manage and optimize human capital.

4. Inferior ROI
The CFO's salary and perks is partly justified with his/her supervision of the HR function. However, the HR department is rarely managed to add value to the bottom-line. Thus, the HR function’s Return on Investment does not materialize. Thus, organizations would be better off by committing a share of their total budget to a skilled professional with 100% concentration toward the talent agenda.

No doubt, the CFO can oversee a HR department that focuses on rewards and benefits and HR operating efficiency. But, when it comes to people related strategic issues such as leadership development, talent management, and workforce productivity, the CFO needs to either go back to school or open the door for a talent minded HR Head that first and foremost represents “talent” in management meetings.

The Inconvenience of People Metrics

2009-04-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

Even in a stagnant economy, top management rarely questions their responsibility to deliver revenue and profit. However, when it comes to people metrics, management remains reluctant to push for and overtake them and be held personally accountable for realizing improvements. For example, being responsible for voluntary staff turnover of over 40 percent seems bizarre to executives in China and instead they resort to common excuses as these: “This is normal for our industry” or “It is part of doing business”. Other questionable excuses include:
• (Regarding reasons for leaving) There is always a company that will pay more. We did not intend to keep them anyway; we do not think that they deserve any promotion or salary increase. Their expectations do not match their skills.
• (Regarding unsatisfactory employee satisfaction scores) We did not have 100 percent participation in the employee survey; so, we did not really get a full picture here and people probably did not understand the questions.
• (Regarding the low amount of training hours per employee) We train on-the job primarily. We have no time for in-class training. Our client meetings always overlap with training times.

Under such circumstances, a hands-on and strong HR function that tracks and calls for Managers’ co-responsibility for people metrics would create enormous headaches for one-dimensional senior management. Therefore, a weak and supportive HR function is preferred by many in power positions. In addition, a mediocre HR department is easier to staff and unable to measure people metrics in the first place. So, the problem is solved and solving problems is a Manager’s primary duty after all. Until of course, a bigger problem arises; the talent in the company has dwindled greatly, workforce apathy is all around, recruitment costs have gone out of control, and the company's reputation has suffered. Now, there are no more quick, easy, and cheap fixes; the competition has soared past your organization.

Start Enlarging Your Talent Pool

2009-03-24T01:07:00.000-07:00

In China, the War for Talent is raging with no end in sight. Therefore, instead of fishing in the same talent pool as your feisty competitors, try to concentrate on influencing the size of your pool. Actions that can be taken include:
• Creating a "fun" and frequently updated website that appeals to and inspires students to pursue a career in your industry and with your company.
• Offering observation placements whereupon students spend a full week with in-house people to see what working in the company is like, what people do, and what makes the company tick.
• Having an open-house to introduce the company’s office environment, works, and people (Make it enjoyable like a tour at a "chocolate factory").
• Sharing your people's knowledge and experience with University students by placing one of your brightest stars in front of the class and having them teach a full course.
• Engaging schools to advertise your Internship program.
• Sponsoring scholarships.
• Participating in career fairs.
• Collaborating with University professors to write and publish a white paper and/or case study on your company’s challenges, what solutions were enacted, and the results of the project in question.
• Inviting the news and newspapers to cover your company's accomplishments, any special employees, and report on new and interesting projects.
• Providing alternative work programs that cater to and bring in seasoned people to work on a part-time or interim basis.

Internship Programs

2009-03-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

Few organizations in China have Internship programs that are thoroughly conceptualized and implemented by the company. Instead, internships are approached on an ad-hoc basis and Interns are hired mostly to off-set headcount shortages. As a result, companies may face low Intern satisfaction scores and consequently high Intern turnover rates that invariably create disturbances to team effectiveness while training efforts do not pay off.

Therefore, it would be beneficial for organizations to design an Internship program that would help the company position itself as a good Employer and not as an exploiter of cheap labor, achieve consistent and quality experiences for Interns, and give Managers a roadmap for Internship arrangements. In order to do so, proper consideration must be given to the following questions:
• What are the expected benefits of the program to the company?
• What are the expected benefits of the program to the Interns?
• What are the objectives of the Intern program?
• How long should the Internship take to be recognized as a valuable experience?
• Who are eligible candidates? What are the minimum requirements?
• What could be the benefits of offering Internship positions to overseas Chinese or foreigners?
• What is the selection process for an Internship position?
• What sort of induction program would be helpful for the Intern to gain a comprehensive understanding of the department, team, and business?
• Should an Intern work on a specific project or help out with any added workload that emerges? What should be the Interns’ tasks?
• Should Interns work OT? How much OT is normal or permitted?
• Should Interns be allowed to use their personal computers at work?
• What level of remuneration appears to be fair for the value Interns create during their Internship?
• What are the expectations of Managers? To what degree will Managers be held responsible for creating a positive and rewarding experience for the Intern?
• What is the most appropriate approval process?
• What quality control tools will be instituted (e.g. Intern Satisfaction Survey, Intern Exit Interview)?

Are People Truly Your Greatest Asset?

2009-02-24T01:03:00.000-08:00

“People are our Greatest Asset” is a motto that is as heavily overused in the corporate world in China as around the world. After all, the "people's agenda” is still not the number one priority on many CEO’s list of strategic priorities. Metrics can be used to help the HR department shift the CEO's priorities to PEOPLE. For example, “Amount of time the CEO spends face-to-face with employees from different management levels”, “Hours per week the CEO spends with the HR Head”, “Number of people initiatives that are owned by the CEO”, and “Employees’ engagement score”.

Additionally, to test and demonstrate that substance exists behind this slogan, organizations should consider adopting the following steps:
• Implementing metrics and targets for the organization's people agenda (Workforce Scorecard).
• Making it really hard for excellent talent to leave (Career Planning and Benefits Planning that surpasses the competition).
• Outlining clearly which behaviors are desirable and which are unacceptable (Employee Handbook).
• Creating policies and practices that reflect workforce trends and show genuine care (Periodic HR and People audits and revisions of policies and practices).
• Promoting common sense and a positive “Yes, I can” approach among policy Administrators so that they do not just follow policies blindly but also think about and understand when policies simply do not apply. In this respect, policy Administrators must be empowered to grant an exception on the spot if the situation requires.
• Showing people a "human touch" and respect at all times.

Lastly, companies preaching “People are our Greatest Asset” should also reevaluate their approach to temporary staff such as Freelancers and Interns.

How to Avoid Sloppy Online Recruitment Advertising

2009-02-10T00:58:00.000-08:00

Since the boom of the Internet, online advertising has become an integral component of all recruitment efforts. It is not only an extremely cost effective form of advertising, but less demanding than print advertising particularly in regards to ad size, the amount of words used, and quality of the entire copy.

As a result, some companies slack off here and delegate the drafting and posting of online recruitment advertising to junior HR staff without further supervision. Over time however, this approach leads to various design formats with inconsistent copy and numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes. More troubling is the fact that these ads seldom portray the job in an attractive and engaging manner and regularly continue to live on and on somewhere in digital space long after the position has been closed; very careless indeed.

So, to reverse this negative cycle and harness positive public relations, prepare a thorough online recruitment advertising policy. Begin by answering the following questions:
• Who is authorizing the advertising of positions?
• Who approves the final draft of the online recruitment advertisement?
• Who determines placement of online recruitment advertisements (which Internet sites are used will likely depend on the nature of the position and an expected ease or difficulty of securing an adequate field of Candidates).
• Who is responsible for assuring the quality of the company’s agreed to branding, style, and standard design format?
• What are the specific guidelines for the content of the online recruitment advertisement (e.g. to be consistent with the position description/person specification with non discriminatory criteria as sex and age, whether to indicate the salary range of the position, etc.)?
• Does the online recruitment advertising need to be in English or in Chinese or bilingual?
• How do we track the effectiveness of the online recruitment advertising by recruitment portal (e.g. effectiveness of the response rates to the advertisement [Applicant Tracking], the percentage of appointments made after the first round of advertising, or the number of applications processed within standard timeframes)?

Five Human Capital/HR Truths to Reinforce in 2009

2009-01-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

1. You cannot rely on the HR function to take care of your people. Every Manager in the company must understand the value of people. Executives and managers must do their part to address strategic people challenges. It is not all up to the HR Department; it is a shared responsibility.
2. HR cannot effectively drive change without a non-HR sponsor. Executive buy-in and in particular the CEO's ongoing and firm commitment are essential to change management. There tend to be just a few change agents in the organization as a whole and this is way many programs and changes fail miserably. See point 1 as well.
3. The entire HR function must learn to help leaders improve their talent decisions, not just implement them. HR practitioners must develop analytical insight to support executive “decision making”. HR is sitting on tons of data but few of which is properly monitored and adjusted to be ready and served up as management information.
4. Simply rebranding HR as “strategic” is not enough. Executives must either hire people capable of assessing people challenges and devising executable solutions or help HR staff develop the required skills and capabilities. If you do not know it, then find it elsewhere and bring it on board or invest in acquiring the skills first. HR strategy is much easier said than done.
5. Bonuses are not tokens to buy future performance. Executives must realize that a "bonus" is a sum of money given to an employee in addition to their regular pay because of excellent work, length of service, accumulated favors, etc. It is not a form of bribery to convince an employee to stay and perform well in the coming year. Concentrate on and fix the true reasons as to why an employee is seriously interested in leaving in the first place.

How do you know if your HR Head lacks strategic potential or leadership?

2008-12-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

• S/he focuses on and strives to keep administrative transactions and other non-strategic activities in-house by limiting the HR budget to HR personnel salaries as much as possible.
• S/he does not understand, drive, nor support (financially or otherwise) any employer branding initiatives and perceives recruitment marketing as a waste of time.
• S/he is unable to recognize that competition for critical talent is heating up and does not understand the supply and demand of critical workforce segments.
• S/he is unable to monitor availability of critical talent for the organization and does not work to influence it (e.g. University engagement).
• S/he does not strive to gain insights into employee factors as turnover or age within the organization’s critical workforce segments.
• S/he believes the company’s recruiter is a junior role and does not have an issue with the recruiter being in charge of overtaking administrative duties connected with e.g. visa for expatriates, new staff announcements, etc.
• S/he does not know the answer to the question: Why would great people want to work at their Company?
• S/he does not recognize the link between the company’s standing in the talent market and its position in the product/service market.

HR People in China

2008-11-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

In China, the HR profession has relatively low barriers to entry. Even today, many HR Departments are filled with HR people without any formal HR qualifications.

Traditionally, vacancies in the HR Department were taken up by graduates of English schools or Finance professionals whose talents were incommensurate with their new responsibilities and duties.

Another wave of HR professionals comes from consulting companies. Just like advertising agencies develop talent for their in-house Marketing Department, recruitment agencies and HR consulting companies produce a talent pool of in-house recruiters and HR executives. These candidates may find themselves overwhelmed with the amount of daily Admin work that requires their attention.

The final batch of HR professionals comes from an Operations background. This group usually starts their career in Marketing, Sales, or Product Development. They in fact have very limited HR know-how.

To climb the corporate ladder, HR people from all three groups must prove that they have a solid understanding of the company's business, can contribute to and collaborate effectively with senior management, and convert data into management information. In a nutshell, the best HR people are entrepreneurial, highly dedicated, solutions-oriented, and hungry to work with people to drive change, development and training, and individual/team/company performance.

Offer Acceptance Rate and Show Up Rate

2008-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

An Offer Acceptance Rate shows the percentage of job offers that have been accepted from the hiring process. It is calculated by knowing the Job Offers Accepted by the Job Offers Extended.

In China, this metric can be complimented by a Show Up Rate which would be the Onboards Completed by Jobs Offers Accepted as it is not uncommon for Candidates not to show up for their first day of work even though they accepted the offer.

Both ratios may be good indicators for measuring the strength of your employer brand, productivity and skillfulness of your recruiters/hiring managers in assessing the needs and wants of the Candidate, and quality and effectiveness of internal communications.

A low rate should force the organization to reevaluate:
• The ways it markets its employee value proposition,
• The salaries benchmarking data,
• Candidates' journey with particular focus on pre-employment activities, and
• The communication approach with Candidates.

An organization should also take proactive steps before, during, and after an offer acceptance to ensure a high conversion rate. A few sample initiatives include:
• Be clear about your employee value proposition and communicate it persuasively.
• Send the Candidate a small company gift, marketing collaterals, and/or a card from the Division Head or even better, the CEO.
• Let the Division Head/CEO call the Candidate.
• Invite the Candidate to join any team activities that are scheduled before his/her Onboard Day.
• Connect with the Candidate via Facebook or Twitter in order to update him/her on the organization's status and any new happenings or successes.

Focus on Strengths

2008-09-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

In both Marketing and HR, the dilemma arises as to where one should allocate resources. Two choices exist; either focus on strengths or concentrate on compensating weaknesses.

For Marketing, these two approaches are discussed, for example, by Dru*:

“If a P&G product had a 12 percent market share in Normandy and only 6 percent in Alsace, P&G would spend twice as much in Normandy as in Alsace. P&G invests where it is strong. Colgate would have done the opposite, believing that the 6 percent in Alsace, lower than the national average, was clear evidence of underexploited potential requiring investment.”

For HR, alternative examples include:
• Guide and encourage high performers to deliver even greater results or help low performers reach average results.
• Motivate employees by focusing on their strengths or helping them identify and overcome some of their weaknesses.
• Reward, grow, and retain “A” players or concentrate on salvaging “C” players.

Without a doubt, performance-driven organizations will choose to focus on high-performers and allocate resources accordingly.

* Dru, Jean-Marie (2007). How Disruption Brought Order: The Story of Winning Strategy in the World of Advertising. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. P. 177.

HR Catch 22

2008-09-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

Strategic HR
To add value and deliver results, HR needs an opportunity to work in partnership with senior management. But, this can only happen if HR first proves that the department adds value.

Board Seat
To make a contribution, HR needs a board seat. But, this can only happen if HR first makes a tangible contribution.

HR Leadership
To change the image and status of HR, highly ambitious and competent leaders must join and work in this field. But, this can only happen if the status of HR is first transformed.

Attracting Talent
To attract talent, a company must establish itself as an up-and-comer and a great place to work. But, this can only happen if the company has great talent from the beginning.

Promotion
To be promoted, an employee must prove essential skills required for a higher position (managerial role). But, this can only happen if s/he is promoted or at least challenged first in order to learn and grow (job stretch).

HR Investment
To invest in HR, an entrepreneurial company must reach financial stability. But, this can only happen if the company invests in HR (e.g. founder’s time, effort, and approach to managing people) in the first place.

Trainer-Training Company-Client
To understand the client’s training needs and be able to quote appropriate and accurate trainer fees, the trainer must be engaged by the training company and involved in the sales process with the client. But, this can only happen if the trainer fees between the trainer and training company are agreed upon beforehand.

Staff Appraisal
Staff appraisal forms are designed for reluctant managers but they are least likely to use them effectively. Instead, good managers fill out the appraisal forms properly and precisely but in general are the ones who do not need them. (Paul Kearns, 2003).

Training
Employees who do not enjoy learning and training look for excuses as not enough time in order to avoid participating in development initiatives. Instead, employees who enjoy and value training rarely miss a day of training and oftentimes are the ones who need it the least.

Performance
When your HR performance system is ineffective, low performers are most likely to stay onboard even though you generally would like them to leave. Instead, high performers who you would like to hold on to and retain are the ones most likely to leave.

HR Ratio versus HR Contribution

2008-09-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

“The real payoff is when we add a new hospital or other operating unit, we don’t have to add an accountant or HR professional.” Dennis Dahlen, Vice President of Finance, Banner Health

As HR is required to bring value, the HR ratio (number of HR professionals for every 100 employees) is used in many companies as an efficiency indicator. This ratio is helpful for benchmarking purposes against industry standards. However, due to limitations of benchmarking, the results are not always conclusive.

In SMEs, a typical HR ratio is 1:100 because HR processes are not usually fully automated and HR is still an evolving function. In larger organizations with added stability, mature processes, and higher degree of automation, a typical HR ratio is 1:250. Regarding China; the HR ratio is moving from 1:100 to 1:200 or 1:300*. Nonetheless, research aimed at specifying policies and practices of HR management systems for high performance shows that firms with high HR management quality have roughly double the number of HR professionals per employee (1:139.51) as compared to companies with low HR management quality (1:253.88)**.

I recently met a HR director from a global company with 1,200 staff in China. This international company employs 50 people in the HR & Admin department leading to a HR ratio of around 1:25 (or 4 HR employees for 100 employees) while payroll, recruitment, and training are outsourced to HR service providers. Their HR ratio shows a major deviation for the benchmarks above but as long as the value addition of each HR employee is greater than the cost incurred to the company, there should be no issues.

After all, the HR ratio is a tactical metric only and focuses on the relationship between quantitative measures (HR’s department size and the company’s size). Size of the HR department can vary considerably and depends on several factors:
• Nature of organization,
• Size,
• Age and phase of growth,
• Management approach,
• Employee profile,
• Centralization or decentralization of the HR function,
• The number of office locations and geographic distribution of employees,
• Expected level of service and support,
• The amount of automation utilized,
• The amount of HR functions outsourced (recruitment, training, payroll, benefits, etc.), and
• The relative complexity of the strategic mission and objectives for the HR function.

Importantly however, there is no clear causal relationship between size and strategic value-added HR.

Therefore, HR should focus on measuring contributions made by HR staff. Three possible measures to consider are:
• “Profit per HR employee” placing the emphasis on the return on HR talent,
• “Number of HR employees” indicating growth, and
• “HR leadership bench strength” (Number of employees who are promotable “ready replacements” for each of the key jobs in the HR function) indicating sustainability.

Once all three measures are tracked and translated into HR practices geared towards HR staff, adding a HR employee will mean “improving the company’s profits”.

Thus, from the strategic angle, companies should ask:
• Does the HR staff have competencies and abilities to deliver results?
• To what extent is HR staff effective in strategic partnering with line managers?
• To what extent is HR staff effective in facilitating change?
• To what extent is HR staff effective in advocating employees?
• To what extent is HR staff effective in providing HR operational excellence?

The ideal HR department size or being concerned with another HR hire would not be an issue then.

* Powell, Jonathan (2007, November 17). ”Fast-changing world of HR”. In Classified Post. p. 42.
** Becker, Brain E., Huselid, Mark A, and Ulrich, Dave (2001). The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Recruitment and Training Interdependency

2008-08-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

HR sub-processes, recruitment and training, may be operated and managed independently. But essentially, they are two sides of one coin. Therefore, if recruitment and training professionals work in isolation, then, for example, an incompatible set of metrics will be used causing inefficiencies.

Companies that measure cost per hire and hold hiring managers accountable for this outcome will see lower cost per hire over time. But, the unintended consequence of this action is usually a lower quality of new hires resulting in increasing training needs and total labor costs. Similarly, poorly designed training may be ineffective and will not bring about a change in performance. This may negatively impact employee job satisfaction which in turn influences the attrition rate. An escalating attrition rate causes greater demand for recruitment.

Therefore, when analyzing recruitment and training dynamics, a clear understanding must exist between which competencies have to be bought (recruitment) and which can be built (training and development). The traditional trade-off is; “Hire for attitude and train for skills and/or knowledge”.

In China, English is a skill that must be hired and trained for. Even so, two divergent approaches exist for tackling this challenge. The first approach involves prioritizing the hiring of employees with solid professional knowledge and mediocre English skills in hopes of improving their language skills through training and development programs. The second approach focuses on hiring employees with high levels of English proficiency while providing training in the relevant professional area. In this case, the English majors quite often pursue a part-time post-graduate business degree to boost their career.

Shopping WISELY for an ESL Provider

2008-08-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

It is unrealistic to expect a barber to ask a customer why s/he needs their hair cut and refuse service if the customer hopes to lose 10 pounds as a result; even though the barber realizes that a new hair cut will not guarantee the desired outcome. Similarly, it is highly unlikely that a sales person will send a prospect away once you knock on their door asking for English language training. Nevertheless, a results-oriented English language training provider must be interested in determining whether or not English training is really going to solve your performance problems and if warranted, advise you to go ahead with a different solution.

So, to be successful in training endeavors, you should find ESL providers that:

Understand the art of tailor-made solutions
Tailor-made programs are sold at a significant premium and providers favor them over off-the-shelf solutions. Before you choose a tailor-made course, understand the advantages and disadvantages of both. Most-importantly however, ensure that there is adequate customization based on well-understood learning tasks and thus there is “more to it” then just your logo on the training materials.

Are able to see the big picture
Corporate training is predominantly about enhancing a company’s business performance. Choose ESL providers that focus on job application of their training solutions and care about your company’s plan to provide participants the opportunity to practice their new skills in the workplace. In addition, expect training providers to consider your company’s values, approach to leadership, strategy, and vision in order to reinforce them during the training.

Approach training evaluation as an 80:20 split
Training evaluation is an integral part of planning processes (pre-training) whereupon performance objectives and criteria should be agreed upon. Expect training providers to spend 80 percent of their time and effort on pre-training evaluation processes and the remaining 20 percent on post-training ones.

Focus on your needs instead of implementation issues
Mistakenly, some ESL providers tend to believe they provide tailor-made solutions when they work with clients on pure implementation issues as the group size, number of training hours, days on which training will take place, financial constraints, etc. Although these are notable features of tailor-made solutions, the true value lies in training material that corresponds to established objectives. Ensure ESL providers understand the art of tailor-made solutions.

Experience: A Perpetuating Myth

2008-08-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

The premise that you can only do what you have done in the past and that if you’ve done it in the past then you must be good at it; is still an indispensable staple for the majority of jobs.

Unsurprisingly, we believe vehemently that experience counts; but evidence does not support their view*. Did you know:

• Experienced managers tend to be no more effective than managers with little experience.

• In even the most complex jobs, real learning typically ends after about two years. Too often, 20 years of experience is nothing more than one year of experience repeated 20 times!

• A situation in which experience is obtained is rarely comparable to a new situation.

• Experience is often confused with expertise. Practice makes permanent, not perfect.

Common beliefs to reevaluate are:
• The length of time on a job is a measure of experience,
• Applicants are skilled because they have experience, and
• Professionals who are experienced are good at what they do.

After all, inexperienced candidates have their advantages too.

* Robbins, Stephen P. (2005). Organizational behavior. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Internal Employer Branding Strategy

2008-08-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

You cannot stop marketing to your employees just because they work for you. Employees must be constantly reminded of why they joined the organization in the first place and what is special about your company that causes them to stay.

A few ideas for strengthening your company’s brand internally:
• Communicate your strengths frequently; for example, your involvement in the community, awards, and successes that are acknowledged in the press or by professional associations.
• Encourage stories about what it is like to work at your company and store them as a “Story Inventory”.
• Engage employees during the interview process by having them deliver a company pitch to job candidates.
• Involve your employee’s family, if applicable.
• Celebrate your accomplishments publicly.

Internal branding efforts help build self-esteem, commitment, and increase motivation among employees.

Employer Positioning

2008-07-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

When generating synergies between marketing and HR, one can not overlook learning from Levi Strauss or Nike. Both corporate giants offer tailor-made products to fit unique needs and desires of every individual customer.

HR departments already recognize the need to position their companies in job markets. They draft, declare, and communicate the company’s value proposition to employees and candidates. An Employee Value Proposition (EVP) in the form of a statement of why the total work experience at a given company is superior to that of another is however not enough.

EVP must be real in terms of what the employee receives from the company for their commitment and the contributions they are expected to make. VOI2C2E is a framework for detailing elements of an EVP*:

• Vision. The firm has a clear sense of the future that engages hearts and minds and creates pride among employees.
• Opportunity. The work provides a chance to grow both personally and professionally, and to develop skills and knowledge that promote present and future employability.
• Incentive. The compensation package is fair and equitable, including base salary, bonus, and other financial incentives.
• Impact. The work itself makes a difference or creates meaning, particularly as it connects the employee with a customer who uses the employee’s work.
• Community. The social environment includes being part of a team (when appropriate) and working with co-workers who care.
• Communication. The flow of information is two-way, so employees are informed about what is going on.
• Experimentation. Working hours, dress, and other policies are flexible and designed to adapt to the needs of both the firm and the employee.

Obviously, different employees will rank the importance of each element of this framework on their own accord. Therefore, an effective EVP will personalize the agreement so employees who meet expectations will be rewarded with VOI2C2E elements that matter most to them.

So, it is not only vital to differentiate the company from other companies. Just like Levi Strauss and Nike can address customers’ unique preferences, HR ought to differentiate the EVP for each employee.

The goal of HR should not be so much attempting to differentiate the company from other companies, as putting people first and differentiating effectively between them. This sort of flexibility from an EVP can build true commitment among employees.

* Ulrich, Dave, & Brockbank, Wayne (2005). The HR Value Proposition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Job Branding

2008-07-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

Job branding is yet another concept that brings the principles of marketing and HR together in order to attract and retain talent.

Essentially, this is a technique to increase the importance of the job by tying it directly into the company’s strategy, vision, or an important initiative or major project. Accordingly, candidates and employees can clearly see growth opportunities that come with successful performance, i.e. what they can learn, do, and become.

Surprisingly though, job branding is only becoming fashionable now. But, tying each job in some way to the company’s strategy should have been HR’s task for decades. How else could HR have determined the need for new positions or additional staff in certain positions?

Or is it that simply with growth, companies hire more and more employees who do not (recognize how they) create value and whose work does not connect to the company’s strategy?

True, some jobs can be more directly connected with strategy than others, and there are jobs that are absolutely strategy-general, e.g. switch-board operator. However, a clear sight between employees’ work and value creation must be sought to create a win situation; for employees, customers, or shareholders.

Outsourcing and Culture

2008-07-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

From a strategic HR standpoint, outsourcing should be considered when different company functions exhibit different cultures and assert conflicting cultural expectations. The same holds true when handling different business units that require different business strategy and thereby a distinct HR strategy*.

“One organization created a new company to market a product it developed because the reward systems required sales force effectiveness which was culturally incompatible with the values and beliefs of the rest of the organization. In another organization, the information system function was outsourced because the required culture of supporting continuous and dramatic innovation did not fit the rather pedestrian needs of the rest of the organization.”

Nevertheless, business leaders can still agree that cultural differences are acceptable or manageable across an organization. As an example, The Four Seasons organizational culture strongly advocates and supports a business strategy of customer intimacy to deliver world-class experiences for guests; whatever it takes! But, the organization’s billing and procurement function adheres to adding value through efficiency and cost-reduction.

When companies deliberate outsourcing decisions, they should seek out HR contribution. HR needs to analyze the subcultures in an organization in addition to the more traditional outsourcing assessment which concentrates on strategic importance, cost, and quality** for sourcing capabilities.

* Greene, Robert J. (1995). Culturally Compatible HR Strategies. HR Magazine. Vol. 40, June 1, pp. 115-122.
** Gottfredson, Mark; Puryear, Rudy, & Phillips, Stephen (2005). ”Strategic Sourcing: From Periphery to the Core”. Harvard Business Review. Vol. 83, No. 2, March. pp.132-9.

Creativity in the Creative Industry

2008-07-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Creativity is a subjective area. After all, certain creative businesses are more creative than others and there are ones which are not perceived as creative at all by their peers. Nonetheless, probably all of these creative enterprises will call “creativity” as their core competency. Creativity is the human ability to see things differently and have original ideas. Thus, talent is an essential asset for creative enterprises.

When a shortage of talent prevails, debates ignite over whether talent is born or made. In respect to leadership, the current mainstream conclusion dictates that Leaders are born and they are always made. In respect to creative talent, an increasingly common belief is that everyone has creative potential; which has to be unleashed by removing “mental locks”. In particular, the training industry and consulting which focuses on innovation are based upon this premise and consequently strive to contradict the old proverb, “You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks”.

Through an appropriate organizational culture, supportive and physical environment, creativity can be set free, fostered, and capitalized. Beyond literally thousands of tips to boost creativity, there are also a gazillion approaches, tools, and techniques. A few recent concepts to unleash creativity include Mid-level managers as key enablers, Appropriate and targeted training as intensive and thorough as the one of golf players or Thinking from Inside of the Box. Let us also not forget OD specialists and interior designers; these professionals can help release creativity by transforming companies’ workplace environment.

The point of the story is:
If you cannot buy talent (recruit), then build it (invest in training). If you can buy talent, then make sure you do not scare it away. In both cases, bind talent (retain) and build the best climate conducive for creativity. Otherwise, someone else will!

Name Game

2008-07-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

A recent American study of first names* showed that the name an individual carries has a significant impact on how he or she is viewed, and conceivably, whether or not the individual is hired for a job.

More specifically, researchers found that common names were seen as least unique, best liked, and most likely to be hired. Unusual names were seen as most unique, least liked, and least likely to be hired.

The findings may not necessarily relate to the real world since the study was conducted in a laboratory situation. But, it is also worthwhile to keep in mind that research exists showing a strong correlation between an individual's attitudes and subsequent behavior.

Importantly, there are several practical implications of the study’s findings. These may also be considered in countries like China.

Because of bias in how people perceive names and for easier communication, Chinese employees routinely choose Western names when dealing with foreigners. Thus, when selecting a name, they may want to reconsider choosing distinctive or unique names as Purple, Sugar, Jelly, Fish, Candy, or Shellboy to name a few, so as to avoid any possible dislike of the name during their professional career.

For HR professionals, they need to be aware that there seems to be a clear bias in how people perceive names. When CVs are screened for hiring purposes names (just like pictures) should be left off to avoid potential discrimination. Alternatively, applications and CVs could be routed to hiring managers with initials only or applicant numbers.

*Cotton, John L.; O'Neill, Bonnie S.; and Griffin, Andrea (2008). The “name game”: affective and hiring reactions to first names. Journal of Managerial Psychology. Vol. 23. No. 1. pp. 18-39.

From Cultures by Accident to Cultures by Design

2008-06-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

When it comes to marketing, companies are prompt to adopt the rule of “thinking globally and acting locally”; but, in talent management, they tend to promote values and working styles of the company’s home country.

Nevertheless, despite ongoing efforts to encourage uniform productivity, process standards, management style, performance expectations, etc., a significant degree of misalignment occurs between organizational cultures in China and global agendas. Consequently, hybrid cultures emerge from cultures carried over by expatriates, cultural dynamics of local Chinese, and the divergent third-cultures of returnees and overseas Chinese. These cultures are very much “by accident” and not “by design”.

Specifically, reasons for the development of cultures by accident include:
• People management practices can remain defunct because other methods exist for management to increase shareholder value.
• A “come and go attitude” of expatriates. Expatriates’ job embeddedness is relatively low since their connections to the community and the local organization are weak.
• High attrition rates among senior managers and employees. As the majority of employees seem to be quite new to the organization, there is no one to pass along company values and socialize new hires into the established culture. Consequently, every individual applies their own set of values when working with internal and external stakeholders.
• An inability of HR to engage in the organization from a strategy perspective and design a system to develop a desired culture. The role of strategic partner is overshadowed by the role of administrative expert.
• Scarcity of talent precludes recruiters from assessing candidates’ values and whether a cultural fit exists.

Cultures in China will become by design and play an increasing role when the following changes occur:
• Companies will run out of options for bottom-line improvements. Cost effectiveness and quality standards become uniform and will no longer differentiate the company substantially from their competitors.
• The selection of expatriate candidates becomes more rigorous. The candidates will have the “right” skills, cultural attitudes, and a long-term intention to live there.
• Companies develop strategy to effectively retain leaders and ensure their high commitment levels.
• HR professionals learn tools to uncover organizational self-perception and develop skills in culture management and change management.
• With the growing number of qualified candidates, knowledge and skill sets quickly become redundant.

Do Not Apply

2008-06-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

When advertising positions, companies attempt to prevent unqualified candidates from applying through setting different bars.

Recently, a position for the Head of Human Resources at an “established Foreign Bank, upholding its long tradition of providing value-added services for both institutional and private investors in the region” was advertised by a third-party recruiter.

The most interesting requirement was, "candidates currently earning less than RMB 700,000 do not apply."

Obviously, this point implies that the bank is seeking a professional:
• … with experience at an established and more bureaucratic company as opposed to a smaller and more entrepreneurial company. In most cases, younger and entrepreneurial companies are much less likely to offer high salaries.
• … who has worked for an international company as opposed to a local Chinese company. Again, international companies are more prone to pay higher salaries.
• … who is older as opposed to younger. Older professionals earn higher salaries than younger ones. Ogilvy's Matthew Anderson says successful executives earn 80 percent of their net worth after the age of 40.

One cannot resist thinking of other motives behind this restriction.
• First, the assumption that the more one earns, the more valuable and pivotal one is. Unfortunately, compensation is not always commensurate with contribution. Furthermore, compensation does not necessarily correspond to strengths and talents, especially in cultures in which leaders are promoted based on age and status.
• The bank follows the belief that one has to climb the career ladder step-by-step instead of leaping over steps.
• The bank yearns to attract a person who has the same role at another organization. The bank probably motivates, encourages, and rewards people performance mainly with money. Consequently, the organization seeks to hire people motivated by money more than intangible elements of EVP.
• The bank is “trying to kill two birds with a single shot”. Upon completion of the recruitment process, the bank owns benchmarking data on compensation packages among professionals with similar qualifications and experience at competitor organizations (within financial or professional services industry).

The only question remains, how likely is it that professionals earning RMB 700,000 will find this job offer since they tend to be passive candidates in China’s job market. An alignment of the medium and the message is inevitably critical.

All Talk

2008-06-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of days, I read several articles on “employee retention” in China based on research data with insight into why employees stay or leave.

In short, employees are simply looking for sound interpersonal relationships, a healthy organizational culture, a sense of contribution, and opportunities to learn and grow; all of which have been considered primary retention drivers (fair compensation is classified as a secondary retention driver).

One can assume that many companies in China under deliver on these factors because of the rising attrition rates and relatively short average tenure of employees (about two years) and leaders (between 1-2 years).

Even so, when providing recommendations to subdue the attrition problem in China, the authors advise to “select the right people”. Accordingly, the candidates should be the right fit to the job, the organization, and the leadership in order to increase retention.

Yes, this is a significant challenge to find talent that not only has the skills, experience, and knowledge, but also does not mind a poor relationship with his/her boss, weak leadership, lack of recognition for their contribution, growth opportunities, and dull work.

Birds and HR

2008-06-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" says an English proverb. In addition, the Polish adage goes like this: "Lepszy wrobel w garsci niz golab na dachu" (German equivalent: "Besser ein Spatz in der Hand, als eine Taube auf dem Dach"); literal meaning: "A sparrow in your hand is better than a pigeon on the roof".

In all three languages, this proverb relates to decision-making and risk-taking even though the English proverb suggests taking a chance for quantitative gain and the Polish and German proverb focuses on the qualitative win.

The current HR practice is just the opposite of the wisdom espoused in the proverb. It implies to see many candidates before hiring the “best”. So, the hiring decision is postponed until interviews are held with a handful of candidates. Even though HR will meet highly qualified candidates, it tends to continue the process by bringing in yet another candidate for an assessment and interview. Indeed, this entire process is a poor use of time and a gamble toward losing qualified candidates on-hand because HR is trying to secure better candidates (more qualified or less expensive, please decide on the one you prefer) though they may be out of reach anyway.

Thus, although well known and passed on from one generation to another, the “bird” proverb has been overruled by indecision in HR. Instead, an applied proverb would cause action once HR finds a suitable candidate. Just-in-Time HR instead of the typical 60-day recruitment cycle would be a real breakthrough.

Lastly, birds are indeed a good metaphor to help shape thinking in contemporary HR because of the way talent is flying around these days between employers as discussed in DDI’s article “Flight of Human Capital”; which I referred to in one of my earlier blog entries.

HR should report to the CEO

2008-05-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

In about 13 percent of companies (for smaller companies the number is 22 percent), the head of HR reports to the CFO (CFO Research Services, 2003).

Per job description, the CFO represents a primarily financial orientation and creates value by saving money or cutting costs. In such an arrangement, it is easy for HR to simply become an extension of accounting with HR programs and processes being implemented for their cost-effectiveness and ease of administration.

Reporting to a CFO is reasonable when HR is focused on transactions, strives to cut costs, and/or works well with metrics. But, the first two conditions are losing relevance since HR has automated and outsourced the majority of transactional processes to various vendors thereby improving efficiency and lowering costs. In fact, HR function expenditures currently account for less than 1 percent of the company’s total operating costs (BNA/SHRM Survey and analyses of 740 publicly held firms).

Instead, HR should focus on maximizing the strategic value of the workforce. After all, total payroll expenses equal between 60 to 70 percent of operating costs.

Thus, the best firms separate the HR function from Finance and require the HR Director to report to the CEO, who, per job description, seeks to generate money by investing in high ROI resources.

Internal Blogging

2008-05-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

Besides stay interviews, internal blogging is an excellent communication platform to increase performance and retention.

Internal blogging encourages business conversations, team building, project management, knowledge sharing, cross-shift communications, and provides a window of opportunity to learn what employees think about their company*.

Companies that support internal blogging have seen improvements in their products, processes, and quality of service as a result of employees being more communicative, more involved, and more outwardly focused. Other benefits of internal blogging include:
• Employees enjoy their work more,
• Employees connect more with people outside their teams, and
• Employees share and receive information on a whole in a new scale.

Furthermore, the best employee blogs allow for open brainstorming and problem-solving and thereby improve efficiency across the organization.

For these reasons, internal blogging has a great potential to become another “HR best practice”. However, before your organization can deploy internal blogging, it must be considered either this framework is appropriate given your organizational circumstances.

* Wright, Jeremy (2006). Blog Marketing. New York: McGraw Hill.

Holiday Countdown

2008-05-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

With 10 days of public holidays and an average of 10 days for annual leave, healthy employees in China work 241 days a year. This comes up to 1,928 working hours; 241 lunch hours in-between working hours and up to 582 hours of traveling time (to and from work).

Yet, quite a few employees go to work counting their next upcoming days off from their employer. Comments like the following are not unusual: “Another two days to go before the weekend”, “I already booked the flight, another three weeks to go”, “We just came back from our holiday and now must wait 7 weeks for Labour Day Holiday”, etc.

All too often, holidays are the key impetus for satisfaction in employees’ professional life.

Understandably, holidays are something to look forward and a break from a routine. But, employers should learn to distinguish between holiday excitement and holiday relief. After all, they expect employees to arrive back from their holiday revitalized and not sorry to be back at work.

A reluctance to return may signal that the company does not challenge, inspire, and motivate the employees. Leaders and managers should change a defunct culture by designing meaningful work experiences so that employees view 31% of their life each year as a contribution rather than a sacrifice.

Outsmart the Proverbs

2008-05-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

„Jak cie widza, ... to pracuj” – When they see you, ... then work (Original: How they see you, that's how they perceive you.)

„Kto pod kim dolki kopie..., ten szybko awansuje” -- Who digs a trap for others, ... gets promoted faster (Original: Who digs a trap for others ends up in it himself.)

„Gdyby kozka nie skakala, ... to by nie dostala podwyzki” -- If the goat didn't jump, ... she wouldn’t receive a pay increase (Original: If the goat didn't jump, she wouldn't have broken her leg.)

Service Orientation

2008-04-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

In China, businesses still do not quite get the change necessary to bring about high quality customer experiences. Employees’ behavior remains inadequate despite the rising customer expectations. Weak organizational cultures are responsible for this poor understanding of customer care amongst employees.

To overcome employees’ poor service orientation, leaders should define the desired culture along with specifications of how people should behave. While the former will dictate how customers perceive the company’s culture, the latter will drive employees’ behavior.

As an example, visitors to a Disney theme park experience the friendly Disney culture. This means that Disney employees smile, make eye contact, answer questions cheerfully and accurately, offer to help anyone who looks lost, or try to bring laughter to tired or irritable children.

Complexity of Customer Service

2008-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

What makes for great service at a restaurant? Which type of service would you prefer and ascribe to under the following scenario?

Scenario: Hotel Restaurant in Bali
You and your friend sit down at a restaurant and then the waiter serves both of you. He comes to your table several times in order to take an order, deliver the drinks and dishes, and present the bill. During this entry time, you are engaged in a heavy conversation with your friend. So, should the waiter do his job:
1. Without really calling for too much attention from you and your friend or
2. Gain your attention every time by interrupting your conversation with a friendly “excuse me Sir/Madam” followed by the name of the item ordered as he places it in front of you.

Do you:
1. Fully appreciate the politeness and continuous attentiveness or
2. Think the waiter is a bit annoying or
3. Feel that his sincerity is not genuine because of this constant and robotic-like politeness.

Balinese staff’s frequent interaction with either an “excuse me” or “hello” accompanied by a smile and eye contact may be part of the local culture or behaviors that were taught and reinforced through a behavioral training to offer a high level of customer service. As for the latter, L&D managers were quite successful at promoting a pre-defined level of hospitality.

An important point to realize is that when substantial resources are exerted for teaching, improving, and “reinforcing” customer service, the L&D team should strive to understand the company’s customers and their expectations first. Then, the most important question remains; what kind of service is warranted, appreciated, needed, and wanted by the customer group? Customer service is only excellent in the eyes of the beholders.

New Words to avoid Old Connotations

2008-04-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Semantics and the need for connotation free terms cause us to increasingly relate to workforce as talent. Words direct our actions, help us to persevere, and can even cause a shift in thinking.

In the 90’s, management’s policy-arm “Personnel” evolved into what is now commonly referred to as “HR”. At the same time, the department was expected to go beyond the administrative role and instead provide human resources management with essential functions of recruitment, training, performance appraisal, C&B, etc. However, HR did not deliver what the “new name” pledged while the need to create value through people intensified and skill shortages escalated during the first decade of 21st century.

As a result, to breakaway from the traditional role of support and administration, many organizations crafted novel offices as the one of Chief People Officer, People Performance Process Owner or a Talent Director, etc. Some went even further to separate L&D units from HR altogether while leaving HR responsible for the numerous routine tasks connected with talent management as completing forms, collecting documents from staff on-time, and organizing Christmas parties and staff breakfasts.

If these new functions (regardless of the name they may operate under) do not deliver results, then we will be brainstorming new names once again. Hopefully, next time it won’t just be old wine in a new bottle.

Presenteeism

2008-04-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

One thing that can kill an employee’s enthusiasm toward a new position is the need for presenteeism.

Presenteeism corresponds to absenteeism and refers to employees’ extra presence at work despite workload.

Drawbacks from the culture of presenteeism include encouragement for face-time instead of performance and results. In addition, presenteeism does not acknowledge and entrust employees to adopt the “new” way of working: anytime from anywhere. Furthermore, presenteeism:
• Supports style over substance,
• Hinders productivity and effectiveness,
• Diminishes work-life balance,
• Encourages mobbing and bullying,
• May breed insecurity, fear, and even intimidation among employees,
• May deter empowerment among employees, and
• Reinforces hierarchy and differences between management and employees.

Employment Security

2008-04-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

In China, many MNCs have been spoiled by the abundance of labor and view people, particularly in non-managerial positions, as a commodity. Until recently, those companies were not troubled by high attrition rates and poor work design leading to burnout, stress, work-life-imbalance.

Nevertheless, as the salary levels rise, companies are increasingly concerned with the effectiveness of their workforce. More and more companies have embraced the concept of employee retention and strive to increase the productivity, accountability and responsibility among their workforce. Employee engagement programs are frequently utilized solution to achieve such objectives.

Employers however remain not very effective at defining what is it that they want the workers engage in. They also remain unable to effectively operationalize organizational objectives and link them to performance expectations, essential for increasing efficiency and effectiveness. Corporate missions in such companies are reduced to creating a “fun” place to work, participating in CSR initiatives, and postulating empowerment. At the same time, profit targets and business objectives are tabooed, not shared with employees with overall financial literacy remaining low.
What do the companies try to hide, that they do not make money at all or have solid profit margins and are simply afraid to share it with the workforce.

I believe however, that demand for improved productivity requires that employees understand how the company, as a for-profit entity, is doing toward achieving their essential objective (profitability) and how everyone is contributing to this end. How else can one instill ownership?

Profits should not be hidden. Only profits can guarantee long-term employment security. If the company does not make profits, it goes bankrupt and lay-offs all employees.

In turn, employment security is one of the most valued elements of Employee Value Proposition and a critical piece of high performance work arrangement. Then, innovations in work practices and productivity improvements can be only sustainable when employee to do not fear that that by increasing productivity they will work themselves out of their jobs.

Developing Retention Strategy

2008-03-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

Retention must be approached strategically to achieve measurable, sustainable, and long-term impact for your organization.

In order to develop an effective retention strategy, start with the following four steps:

1. Understand your company’s strategy
Determine what sort and type of talent should be retained.

2. Collect employee demographic data
Analyze your workforce in terms of age and career stages (for example, early career, mid-career, late career), gender, management level, etc. List any reasons why the employee accepted a position in your company from the beginning.

3. Analyze your attrition rate
Investigate the attrition rate over several years by distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary, internal and external, and dysfunctional (of high performers) and functional (of low performers) turnover. Apply the fishbone diagram or other tools to solve complex problems.

4. Conduct stay interviews

The keys to a successful retention strategy involve knowing:
• What works within the parameters of your company’s culture,
• What works for your employees, and
• What employees value about your company and their work.

Bad Vibes through Seating Arrangements

2008-03-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

Leaving aside interview techniques, a pure seating arrangement can influence the status and power dynamics of a job interview.

Location of chairs and their height (from the floor level) can create an atmosphere of seriousness, partnership, or compassion. Besides, the chair size and its accessories may also have impact on the mood.

Typically, an interviewer and interviewee sit directly opposite one another as on the attached picture.

In this seating arrangement, the most power is exerted and a defensive and competitive atmosphere prevails. In addition, the table becomes a solid barrier between both parties.

Therefore, the competitive position almost implies that the parties are meeting to work out why they should not enter an employer-employee relationship. At the same time, the idea of a shared vision and moving together in the same direction is pushed into the background. Without a doubt, this position does not foster understanding and does not put an interviewee at ease when speaking with the interviewer. In addition, conversations tend to be significantly shorter in this position.

The competitive position can be quite detrimental to recruitment practices.

Tell me the Future

2008-03-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

HR and Finance represent two different kinds of expertise to help the CEO grow the business.

So, for the two to work collaboratively, both should have equal weight and influence. For this reason, Liz Ryan suggests that professionals in the top HR spot should receive the same compensation as the CFO. After all, “Why would a company hesitate to pay its top people officer just what its top money officer is earning? Beats me -- unless the company doesn't value its people as much as it says it does.” Ryan writes.

Interestingly, according to Michael Page’s Salary Survey for 2007/2008, a CFO at an established company receives an annual salary of HK$ 1.5 - 3 million+ whereas the HR Director at a large company earns HK$ 1.4 million+.

This discrepancy demonstrates that:
• Firms are more interested in past harvest (apples) than in future earnings potential (apple tree roots),
• Firms value Finance’s oversight role on how and where dollars are spent more than HR’s role in talent management,
• Firms appreciate building a fiscally sound company (Finance) more than an organizationally sound company (HR),
• Finance departments are incapable of applying financial thinking to an area where value is largely intangible (HR) and therefore do not support a significant investment in the people officer position,
• HR departments are incapable of addressing the value that they create in financial terms and therefore cannot change its image of cost centers.

Yet, for both areas, there is a long way to go to be strategically significant; for HR to be able to create intangibles and for Finance to be able to grasp them in a future-oriented Intellectual Capital Balance Sheet.

Stay Interviews (Part II)

2008-03-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

Following up on my earlier post on the role of stay interviews, a question emerged on Xing’s “Human Resources in China” forum as to the difference between the stay interview and the suggestion box.

What the stay interview and the suggestion box have in common is that both tools seek out opinions of a company’s workforce during the actual employment phase and not after and toward the very end of an employment period as an exit interview does. Furthermore, both tools also require an action plan for implementing findings or suggestions to be effective.

As to the differences, the suggestion box is definitely a more efficient way to receive employee feedback since it does not require as many resources of both the interviewee (time and productivity costs) and interviewer (e.g. consultancy fees).

Most importantly however, the stay interview and the suggestion box differ in terms of their underlining objective. The suggestion box is not specifically a HR tool and is an outlet open for comments about business, business processes, customer relationships, etc. But, the stay interview is an individual-centric HR tool; it is about the employee’s well-being, development, and their perception of the employer.

Notably, suggestions can also be requested in a stay interview (What would you do differently here?) but rather in respect to the way the company manages its people than the business as a whole. After all, asking employees to provide suggestions engages them in solving organizational problems and helps to generates support for change initiatives.

Magic in Your Workplace

2008-03-07T09:02:00.000-08:00

March 8th is International Women’s Day. This day brings about awareness of women’s issues, recognizes achievements, and encourages leadership. Women business owners, leaders, community role models, mothers, and wives are commemorated and celebrated while pinpointing diversity, work-life balance, and glass ceiling concerns; still very dominant in the business world.

In fact, only 16 percent of all senior executives in Fortune 500 companies are held by women. Worst still, research shows that top women leaders feel like outsiders in their organizations.

But, women leaders in general excel at overtaking the responsibility for workforce performance. They strive to establish bonds with their workforce, develop genuine interest and understanding toward their staff, manage by sending signals about what is valued, and what is appropriate, etc.

On a personal note, one word connects two remarkable women I met this year. Both, Ruth Ang, Managing Director of TBWA\ and Alexandra Hynes, Co-Owner and CEO of Salzer Consulting place magic in the centre of their leadership approach. They motivate by creating magic, believe that they can achieve results through magic, and seek out magic as the highest performance level.

So, when was the last time you experienced magic in your workplace?

Organizational Self-Awareness

2008-02-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

An increasing body of evidence supports the linkage between an organization's culture and its business performance. However, managerial and non-managerial staffs in Shanghai rarely talk about their company’s culture at ease.

During the past several weeks, I conducted very sporadic and unsystematic research in China to gauge employees’ and especially recruiters’ ability to describe their company’s organizational culture. The majority of professionals that I spoke with had very little to say when asked; third-party recruiters knew the least.

Comments were usually limited to: young staff, international team, big and established company, dynamic environment, processes to foster innovation, specific culture, unique culture, very distinctive culture, etc. Well, let’s stop before we get even more vague and tautological.

So, how can employees provide more substantive responses when referring to their company’s culture? One way of doing so involves increasing organizational self-awareness through:
• Learning dimensions of organizational culture,
• Understanding how the company scores against these dimensions, and
• Communicating the above to employees regularly (message reinforcement).

Raising organizational awareness can increase recruiters’ ability to promote the company to talents, managers’ ability to engage employees, and employees’ understanding of their own roles.

Cultural Fit

2008-02-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

Cultural fit is the congruence between individual and organizational values.

Nevertheless, the concept of cultural fit is ambiguous because the choices of values are limited and organizational cultures are rooted in relatively similar if not the same values.

For example, accountability, integrity, and creativity are among the favorite values articulated by companies of different sizes and in different industries. But, companies can go differently about them in every day situations. Regarding accountability, one company can develop a very rigorous performance management system while the other still tolerates low performers and has no processes in place for exiting them. In respect to integrity, this particular value can be non-negotiable for some companies while perfectly negotiable for others. Additionally, creativity can be differently celebrated and practiced differently at various companies.

In fact, companies do not differ so much in the selection of values but in terms of how they cultivate values and are able to impact conditions where they flourish. Similarly, sometimes the values individuals think they embrace (ideal values they should have because of outside influence such as family, religion, or employer) are actually different from those they live (actual values).

Thus, when determining cultural fit, there are two useful tests to run in order to identify peoples’ actual values:
• Calendar test - How much time do you spend each week trying to acquire or increase this value?
• Checkbook test - How much money do you spend each week trying to acquire or increase this value?
The same questions apply of course to companies as well.

Importantly, prerequisites to success for assessing cultural fit are a solid self-awareness of employees and candidates and a sound company’s own organizational awareness.

Economic Crime means HR has failed

2008-02-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

When codifying their desired culture, companies also formulate core values including the corporate governance/ethics issues expected of each employee. Even so, economic crime occurs in various companies and often this is not an isolated incident only.

In February’s issue of Shanghai Business Review, the nuts and bolts of economic crime in China were covered along with advice on how businesses can protect themselves. Key ideas presented include:
• Ensure that ethical culture emanates from the top,
• Provide regular training with real world scenarios,
• Establish a confidential hotline for whistleblowers,
• Make a public example of wrongdoers,
• Investigate reasons behind employees’ refusal of a promotion, employees’ unwillingness to take holidays for fear of replacement (possibly exposing a scam), and employees’ access to files that are unnecessary for their job,
• Introduce control systems to prevent a “Fraud Triangle” (motivation, opportunity, and rationalization), and
• Talk with customers to ensure that employees are conducting themselves ethically.

Notably, all of these activities fall underneath the field of HR. Indeed, HR’s job is to establish guidelines for ethical behavior and constantly reinforce them. However, overcoming a systemic problem with unethical behavior by leaders in certain industries (e.g. health care) or countries (e.g. China) may be out of HR’s reach and relates more than anything to Don Quixote’s Fighting Windmills. Nonetheless, I believe HR’s responsibility for designing a strong ethical culture translates into their partial responsibility for economic crime.

CNY Resolution: Walk the Talk

2008-02-11T10:24:00.000-08:00

In 2008, financial rewards will continue to be the company’s chief weapon in the War for Talent.

Nonetheless, employers’ competition for talent based on compensation is as dreadful as market competition based on price. Undercutting prices can lead to an increase in market share in the short-term; however it can impact the profitability in the long-term. Comparable, companies can successfully lure talent, but may have difficulties to gain their loyalty and commitment over the long haul.

DDI’s Retention Drivers and Employee Commitment Model confirms that monetary incentives have a short life. Employees particularly fall prey to higher financial rewards (tangible elements of EVP) from a competitor, when they feel dissatisfied with the level of leadership, growth opportunities, and culture (intangible elements of EVP) at their current company. Thus, talent can be successfully attracted with EVP tangibles but must be retained with EVP intangibles.

So, to stop this vicious cycle of turnover, companies should design a distinctive EVP and actually walk the corporate talk of “employees are our greatest assets”. Surely this could be a valid Chinese New Year’s Resolution.

A Happy Year of the Rat!

Personal Impact Map

2008-02-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

The rise of job branding clearly shows that companies are unable to communicate to their employees how each and every one of them creates value.

Thus, only a few employees can share bottom-line accomplishments like increased revenues, decreased costs, increased prices, increased product/service quality (so that it leads to one of the previous three) or efficiency improvements (better, faster, cheaper) during their tenure.

The vast majority of the workforce does not even believe they make a difference let alone their performance or lack thereof can have an impact on the company’s profits. As a result, when applying for a new job, many applicants have difficulties specifying their achievements.

Managers should start changing this reality by helping employees develop a personal impact map. Together with HR professionals, they should undertake job redesign to create positive benefits, better outcomes, or further progress toward employee career goals.

As a result, each employee will understand how specific activities that he or she performs contribute to the organization’s vision. They will also better recognize their accomplishments.

Lastly, job branding and personal impact mapping can act as catalysts for meaningful and purposeful jobs across the board.

Candidate Value Proposition ?

2008-02-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Recently, a Candidate Value Proposition (CVP) has been recommended to position a company on the job market more effectively and attract talent more successfully. I do not follow the logic of this concept because CVP inherently misses the value-transfer.

CVP probably has its roots in a (Customer) Value Proposition (VP) (marketing) and an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) (HR).

While VP is the sum total of benefits which a vendor promises that a customer will receive in return for the customer's associated payment; an EVP is the sum of everything employees experience and receive while they are part of a company for meeting expectations, exhibiting desired behavior, and producing results. Furthermore, just as VP targets customers and prospects; EVP focuses on both employees and job candidates.

CVP seems thus to be obsolete and possibly confused with 4 P’s of Marketing and the AIDA sales process.

Talent Pivot Points

2008-01-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

In the book, “Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital”*, Boudreau and Ramstad show how HR can evolve to fulfill its potential as a source of strategic advantage.

The authors reviewed what they termed the “Peanut Butter Approach” used by HR in respect to HR strategies; the essence of which is equality and maximizing the company’s investment in its workforce by providing the same incentives, engaging all employees in the same way, and applying HR initiatives equally across the workforce.

Boudreau and Ramstad recommended that HR needs to develop and implement a differentiated and optimized approach to managing human resources. To support their line of thinking, they appraised principles of production and marketing and its relevancy toward HR. For example, the former does not let every machine run at maximum capacity, but optimizes output. The latter on the other hand, focuses on differentiating between customer segments and exposing only certain customer segments to maximum advertising. Just as marketing professionals will ask what customer segments will make the biggest difference to the company’s strategic success, HR professionals should ask where the improvements in talent performance make the biggest difference to the company’s strategic success. Those places are referred to as talent pivot points and are identified using talentship process. The authors then distinguish between vital and pivotal positions using examples of employees at theme parks: “character”, wearing a costume of a cartoon character, and “sweeper”, cleaning; and at the airline: “pilot” and “gate agent”.

The “character” and “pilot” are both vital positions for strategy execution and performance must be maintained at a specific and consistent level.

On the contrary, the “sweeper” and “gate agent” are pivotal since a small difference in performance can make a big difference to customer. Employees in these positions have a lot of opportunities to interact with customers and so may innovate at their own discretion to create great customer experiences.

HR professionals and all employees should think over what specific employee duties can make the biggest difference to the success of their organization. Whatever responsibilities those may be, these talent pivot points must be included in job descriptions and measured in employees’ performance appraisals.

* Boudreau, John W. & Ramstad, Peter (2007). Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

New Intelligence

2008-01-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

Generating intelligence through cross-departmental learning can help your HR department transition from a traditional to strategic approach.

Marketing wisdom and departmental know-how can be applied by HR departments in the following ways:
• It is less expensive to retain high performing employees than to attract new ones just like it is less expensive to keep a customer than to attract a new one
• Employees and managers just like customers do not have needs--they have problems. They do not sit down and think 'I've got a need'. Instead, they experience problems and hence seek solutions to these.
• Every employee is mildly dissatisfied with their employer just like every customer is mildly dissatisfied with a product and/or service.
• Applicants are very smart and will often wait for companies to outbid each other in hopes of receiving a higher salary just like customers are smart and will wait around for a lower price in the market.
• Failure to coordinate HR functional activities results in a lost opportunity and meager business impact just like failure to integrate multiple media in an advertisement campaign will yield poor results.
• Just like marketing, HR creates impact gradually, not immediately. Strategic HR results emerge over time, not overnight.
• Just like marketing efforts must occur continuously, treating employees as valuable assets must occur regularly and often.

Adopting Marketing Practices in HR

2008-01-23T18:52:00.000-08:00

How would marketing professional address HR challenges and problems?

Using marketing practices and principles, marketing professionals would set the following priorities in the HR department:
• Continually track shifts in the external environment, learn quickly, and then adapt HR strategy to the changing business world.
• Develop an employer brand identity.
• Target the message and develop creative slogans and memorable job advertisements.
• Segment employees based on performance (high versus low performers) and management level.
• Give high priority business units, programs, or high potentials special treatment.
• Differentiate the retention strategy and avoid running with the “herd”.
• Stay in touch with employees and managers without being viewed as a pest.
• Collect employee data (e.g. surveys, polls) and analyze what employees think.
• Build better tools to enable efficient and effective communication between employees and HR.
• Do not focus on the HR program but instead concentrate on its benefits - how the HR program can benefit the business?
• Solicit feedback at the end of each HR program–can you improve anywhere?
• Measure the effectiveness and return on investment of the recruitment campaigns, training interventions, any other HR initiatives.
• Ensure that all managers, management systems, measures and rewards work together "in unison".
• Communicate to others in dollars, the universal business language.

Addressing HR using a marketing/sales perspective can strengthen organizational learning and bring forth synergies.

Role of Managers

2008-01-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

“People join companies but they leave managers.” Gallup

“People don’t work for companies as much as they work for other people.” Ruth Branson

"Money can't replace good management." Ann Howard

One of the most impact driven elements of a sound retention strategy is the role of the manager. Regardless of how hard HR professionals work on the retention strategy and how attractive and accommodative the company’s culture and values are, if the managers do not have basic managerial skills, then there is no way the company will succeed and thrive.

Management basics for supervisors and managers include:
• Goal setting,
• Performance evaluation,
• Knowing how to provide feedback – both positive and negative,
• Knowing how to motivate employees,
• Knowing when and how to praise employees,
• The ability to develop other people, and
• Coaching skills to help employees reach greater levels of achievement.

Since several decades, many companies rely on management training programs to build and enhance the talent pipeline for future managers and leaders. During management training, trainees at German companies in China familiarize themselves with various aspects of the company’s operations and develop technical skills and industry knowledge.

A major drawback exists though in most of these management training programs. They simply do not nurture talent in skills related to working with people. This is a significant concern because management is really all about communication.

Teams: Easier Said Then Done

2008-01-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

Teams have been all the “rage” for over a decade and it still remains a buzz word. But companies are realizing fewer gains in performance than anticipated from their attempts to acts as a team. Thus, a team often turns out to be a collection of professionals instead of people excelling at collaboration, symbiotic dependence, and synergy.

Per definition: "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."

Most teams score poorly against this definition. In particular, the following points are cause for concern:

1. The skills of team members should complement each other. The recruitment division seldom compiles information on Executives’ profiles that could help in the formation of effective and productive teams. Yes, cross-functional teams distinguish themselves because of various skills and functional expertises; but even so, too often complementary soft skills are overlooked.
2. The essence of a team relies on a common commitment to a common goal. This point is difficult to ascertain given the different priorities of professionals in an organization. Specifically, a CEO’s priority is shareholder value and the price of the company’s shares. Finance professionals seek to get the most out of money allocated; comply with government regulations, and certify accuracy of financial results. On the contrary, marketing and sales professionals seek more sales resources and higher sales commissions to maintain strong morale for the sales force while seeking out low and easily achievable quotas. Regarding HR professionals, they tend to look at the individual who makes up the workforce; most frequently from the support function angle. However, HR staff is increasingly committed to improving workforce productivity. Thus, team members may frequently differ in terms of goals and agendas.
3. Transforming the common purpose into specific and measurable performance goals is the surest first step of a team. As shown above, an individual’s role in a venture/an organization dictates how they perceive various aspects of strategic execution. A lack of agreement on common goals corresponds to business leaders’ inability to communicate the business strategy and create an environment where all employees are united with certain shared performance goals. Watson Wyatt conducted research involving nearly 14,000 employees across Europe and discovered that clarity over a company’s strategic direction is the most important driver of employee engagement. However, only 13 percent of surveyed employees were classified as value creators, i.e. those who scored high for both commitment and line of sight. A lot of room exists for improvement in this area.
4. High-performing teams must also agree on a common approach with respect to the way they work together to accomplish their mission. At the departmental level, each team member has specific trigger points and their own worldview while they all may lack the big picture view. But, even within the department, professionals may work in isolation and thereby create conflicts within the system. One of the problems is that companies encourage team work while jobs remain designed around individual contributions (OD division), raises are based on individual achievements (C&B division), and training is conducted to strengthen more so individual skills (L&D division). So, team-based rhetoric fails when embedded in a HR management system designed around individual behaviors.
5. Productive teams must develop a sense of mutual accountability. However, if there is disagreement, “it’s usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experiences”.* Moreover, “teams break down under pressure. The team may function quite well with routine issues. But when they confront complex issues that may be embarrassing or threatening, the ‘teamness’ seems to go to pot”.**

The struggle with teamwork prevails among companies as in Universities. Indeed, students do not develop an appreciation for collaboration and acquire solid teamwork skills for the workplace. The reasons being include:

1. Student teams are constructed randomly and even when teams are formed among friends (although this is not a prerequisite for creating a team); students’ most likely lack an understanding and knowledge of each others’ skills.
2. Usually formed “to complete the assignment”, the “common purpose” is the only characteristic of the team that seems to be fulfilled by the student teams.
3. Members of student teams differ in terms of performance goals. In fact, only a small fraction of students would approach an assignment with the aim of earning an A. The majority leave the question of the grade to chance.
4. Student teams are rather quick in setting a schedule and assigning particular tasks among each other. However, team members rarely discuss authority, decision making processes, and rather hope that things will be taken care of indirectly. Most importantly, students also clash in terms of commitment and willingness to invest time and effort.
5. Students habitually avoid accountability and do not care that other team members work more and take on added responsibility for completing an assignment (since all group members receive one grade). Notably, students lack the means to evaluate themselves and other team members toward performance and to exclude underperformers.

When criteria for a successful team cannot be met, Executives should rely on individual leadership skills. As another alternative, companies could attempt to break the structural bias within teams’ through effective team building and HR programs.

* Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. The art and practice of the learning organization. London: Random House.
** Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming Organizational Defenses. Facilitating organizational learning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Applicants as Customers

2008-01-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

Following the logic of viewing employees as customers; job applicants and short-listed candidates can be classified as prospects or even leads. In this regard, every successful sales professional will tell you that to be successful in sales; you must treat your prospects as if they are already your customer. Taking this advice could make recruiters and hiring managers in China more in control of whether a candidate accepts an offer. After all, the recruitment process symbolizes how valued one is to the new employer.

How well does your HR department serve applicants as customers?

To find out, critically review the applicant’s journey and experience with your company from the moment they submit an application or initiate contact. There are several points to consider:

“If you want to work here, you’ll have to find us.”
Is your HR department easy to find? Are there any signs to direct job applicants to your HR department? Is the career website easily accessible and informative at your company’s website?

“If you wish to receive an acknowledgement for submitting an application, please attach a self-addressed envelop with proper postage.”
Do you write back to applicants confirming that you received his/her application? Are you utilizing an auto-response feature for online applicants?

”We will keep your CV on file.”
Do you store resumes of applicants? Or do you really review those CVs toward new vacancies?

“We only contact short listed candidates.”
Are unsuccessful candidates simply forgotten? Do you ever thank applicants for their interest in your company and position?

“Thank you for coming.”
Do you communicate to short-listed candidates reasons why they were not successful? Do you provide valuable feedback to stimulate candidates’ self-development efforts? Do you maintain a communication loop to create evangelists for your company?

Post Interview Satisfaction Survey
Do you investigate the applicants’ perception about the recruitment process and their satisfaction levels with the job interview? Are results of such a survey part of the performance review of recruiters and hiring managers? Do you explore what candidates think about your company?

First impressions and administration of the recruitment process sends a powerful message to applicants and candidates. HR can set an example by maintaining the communication loop with potential employees regardless of the outcome. Simply put, show that your company cares and treat potential hires like they were already your HR customer – they just haven’t signed an offer yet.

Employees as Customers

2008-01-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

In a service economy, every organization and department now looks after customers. Students are customers of Universities, the general public is the customer of police, job seekers are customers of job centers, etc. This trend and understanding has been incorporated into HR as well since employees are also referred to as customers.

Looking at employees and managers as customers helps HR move from a tactical (administrative) to strategic approach (leadership and consultancy).

For your HR department to be more customer-friendly, HR professionals need to aim at achieving high customer satisfaction levels. A pyramid consisting of 4 levels of customer satisfaction can be used to guide you along.

First, HR must be accurate. At this level, employees expect to receive the benefits they enrolled in, the payroll slip to reflect all information accurately, and for HR staff to answer questions competently. It does not matter how friendly HR employees are, if the HR department consistently fails the accuracy test, then customers defect.

Second, HR must be available. At this level, employees expect an open door to their HR department; this means that the HR staff is available anytime, anywhere, and can notice that important, “I need help now” look.

Third, HR must act as a partner to employees and managers. At this level, employees want their HR staff to listen to them, to be responsive to them, and to make them feel that they are on their side of the fence. Employees and managers who feel understood and enabled to execute the strategy are one step closer to real satisfaction and genuine advocacy.

Finally, HR must provide genuine advice. At this level, employees and managers feel the closest bond to their HR staff because they have helped them learn and achieve goals.

The first two levels, accuracy and availability, barely prevent dissatisfaction. The greatest benefits arise at level 3 and level 4. After all, partnership provides HR the opportunity to create positive feelings of satisfaction and advice constitutes the most advanced level of customer satisfaction.

Unemployable Trio

2008-01-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

In one of his recent articles, “How NOT to Hire Tiger Woods!”, Dr. John Sullivan discussed 10 recruiting errors that would prevent a company from hiring exceptional talents like Tiger Woods. Sullivan defines Woods as a game-changer, meaning top caliber talent, top performer, or innovator.

The article mentions several interesting points in every recruiting error raised while using a truly exceptional example. In reality, such an individual is more likely to turn to entrepreneurialism rather than the route of an employee.

Nevertheless, looking at turnover from the recruitment perspective, recruiters not only fail to hire Tiger Woods but frequently overlook a bunch of interesting candidates, including:

Candidates with too much education
Education is the key to opening up doors for an applicant interested in a corporate career. But too much education is not welcomed either. Few companies build their businesses around highly qualified talents (knowledge-intensive businesses and high-tech companies) and even fewer focus predominantly on post-grads. Review of non-managerial posts will leave you with the impression that a bachelor degree will suffice for the longevity of most white collar jobs.

The recruiters detect instantly that a higher level of education can have an adverse impact on a manager-subordinate relationship, team dynamics, and a favorable impact on job expectations. Not surprisingly, job satisfaction is more important for those employees with high cognitive ability, education, and vocation-specific training (who, presumably, would tend to be better performers).*

Candidates with multidisciplinary work experience
In today’s “war for talent”, employers increasingly implement job rotation programs as part of their retention strategy or succession planning. Job rotation programs are highly valuable initiatives to provide qualified employees with the breadth of exposure of an entire operation, facilitate changes in thinking and perspective, and increase job satisfaction. However, from the performance perspective, these programs cause high inefficiencies due to continuous learning curves. Strangely enough, these companies do not value applicants with the know-how and experience in more than one functional area and rarely take the risk to engage such a candidate in a new role in the first place. Even though the glamour of transferable skills continues, working sideways and wearing different hats ought to be left out from the CV.

The recruiters view multidisciplinary work experience with suspicion, are confused over the candidate’s expertise and skills, and thereby favor a candidate with an overly linear profile in terms of their career path and competencies.

Candidates with entrepreneurial experience
Self-employment (entrepreneurial track) is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome by the applicant while seeking out employment opportunities. After all, an entrepreneur is the one who left an employer years or months before to make it happen for him/her. Given the nature of entrepreneurship, major reasons for going back to corporate life include push factors like failure of the entrepreneurial venture, soaring profitability, poor work-life balance, high level of uncertainty, and one could even argue too much accountability and thus stress. While big companies can provide a significant shelter for low-performers in particular, there is no place to hide in a start-up or small organization; the trail is very clear. On the whole, entrepreneurial experience is most valued in the U.S. with self-employed applicants being able to receive higher compensation packages vis-à-vis candidates with an employee work history only (provided certain circumstances of course). In European countries, the opposite is true and I also believe that Asia tends to be more in line with Europe on these aspects.

The recruiters are probably never interested in the entrepreneurs in the first place since these candidates tend to exhibit strong self-directing skills, require flexibility, and may experience difficulties adjusting to the corporate environment. Ironically, while entrepreneurial spirit is a much sought after aptitude among employers, the entrepreneurs can challenge companies fixed and stable processes and top-down decision making. Furthermore, even though entrepreneurs regularly leverage teams and resources, from the corporate perspective, this group is perceived as “lone rangers” rather than team players.

* Trevor, C.O. (2001). Interactions among actual ease-of-movement determinants and job satisfaction in the prediction of voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 621-638.

Stay Interviews

2008-01-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

A stay interview is one of the tools for HR professionals as they manage the shift from a tactical to strategic approach.

Tracking and reporting turnover rates and causes after the fact is a tactical approach whereas alerting managers in advance about which employees are likely to quit and recommending effective retention tools is a strategic approach.

Designed and administered properly, stay interviews can provide warning signals and help to identify issues and problems at an early stage. Conducted with new hires, the stay interview may allow an employer to discover workplace issues particularly visible to novices before they too “go native” in the new company. However, prerequisites for success include:
• Conducting interviews on a regular basis,
• Asking open-ended questions, and
• in similar fashion to the “suggestion-box”, creating an action plan and implementing it in a timely manner.

When analyzing stay interviews, it is important to isolate the results of high-performers, especially those in key positions or “at risk” individuals. You must also analyze your low performers to find out what keeps them in your company!

On another hand, stay interviews allow employees to evaluate the employer’s performance and communicate what is important for them to maintain a high quality work life. It should be expected that this feedback loop will become more and more critical as employees shift to Free Agents (professionals who invest their human capital with the expectation of getting a return on their investment in the form of new experiences that can be added to their work portfolio).

Stay interview questions may be found here.

Talent: Half empty or half full

2008-01-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

Over the Christmas holiday, I read, “The Elephant and The Dragon”*. Meredith compiled a fascinating comparative study of the present and contemporary history of the world’s two most populous nations while connecting their economic, political, and socio-cultural realities to the West.

While not much credit has been given to any educational system (China, India, and USA), China’s priority for rote learning was described as a primary reason for the low proportion (10 percent) of Chinese graduates suitable to work at MNCs. More specifically, the Chinese educational system yields mediocre English-language skills and performs meagerly in terms of creativity, problem solving, and teamwork skills (p. 73, p. 93). These recurring issues have been mentioned in other blogs and articles as well (here, here, here, and here)

On an upbeat note though, Meredith recognizes that Chinese students are upgrading their skills fast.

Indeed, one cannot oversee the fact that many Chinese graduates are more hardworking, ambitious, and determined than their counterparts in developed countries. Importantly, some of their disadvantages can be turned around to advantages by companies that offer a compelling working environment, coherent value set, and an engaging culture. After all, since new graduates have not worked before in local companies, they have not internalized work habits typical of a state run economy. Thus, the fact that these graduates do not know “how things are supposed to be done” either is also beneficial. “Tabula rasa” graduates can be trained to demonstrate strategically relevant behaviors from day one. Fortunately, learning new behavior from scratch is easier to do as opposed to changing habits.

For companies that know how to onboard and socialize new hires, “the talent pool is pretty impressive”**.

* Meredith, Robyn (2007). The Elephant and The Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
** Dennis Lam, Director of Microsoft’s Global Technical Engineering Centre in Shanghai. – In Meredith, 2007, p. 73.

ESL Training Effectiveness

2007-12-31T23:58:00.000-08:00

Was 2007 a successful year for your L&D department? Was your company able to arrange and run effective English language trainings that received good reviews, satisfied your learning objectives, were highly applicable, and delivered an impact to your business? If so, Congratulations!

If not, then the following steps will assist your department to ensure effective trainings in 2008.

1. Ask, “Why do we offer English language training?”
Ask the above question in order to confirm that your company views training as an investment.

2. Spell out business needs
Review goals realized and unrealized, employee performance, and customer surveys to identify performance gaps and areas that must be changed. Be specific and tangible about the nature of your company’s lackluster performance. Choose a level of performance (benchmark) before any learning intervention occurs. Preferably, use existing business measures like:
• Error rates (measured as the number of applications that have to redirected due to data mistakes),
• Costs of miscommunication,
• Service time, and
• Customer satisfaction.

3. Question whether English language training is the correct intervention
First, evaluate either mediocre language skills are the cause of performance gaps. Frequently instead, personal skills as communication skills and interpersonal skills, or behavioral characteristics as a very modest level of confidence and boldness are the true performance barriers. In addition, performance gaps may be a result of different perceptions of how work should be executed, an inappropriate organizational environment, or uninspiring rewards.
Second, assess either training is the correct intervention to close performance gaps. Lackluster talent or personality traits cannot be changed through ESL training but instead requires other intervention.

4. Define training objectives
Determine Business Impact Objectives (level 4), Application Objectives (level 3), Learning Objectives (level 2), and Reaction/Satisfaction Objectives (level 1) for your training. Based on the sample business needs listed above, examples of Business Impact Objectives are:
• Decreasing the error rate by x percent,
• Eliminating costs associated with improper language skills and/or miscommunication,
• Shortening service time by x percent, and
• Increasing customer satisfaction by x percent or raising scores related to staff interaction by x percent.

5. Design the training
Seek out actual and true tailor-made training solutions. If you do not have an in-house design team, develop a set of criteria for selecting an English language training provider that can best meet your needs. Expect them to follow the above four steps and continue shopping around if they do not. Once you engage an ESL provider, work with them closely to define key areas to be addressed in the course and to translate your training objectives into course material imperatives. Do not rush this stage forward, it takes planning, discussions (frank and open), and assessment.

6. Secure employees buy-in
Secure employees’ buy-in by involving them in performance-training dynamics. Develop a corresponding set of HR practices for greater learning impact. Furthermore, ensure that new skills gained by employees through their training are applied and tested in daily work.

7. Perform post-course evaluation
Once the training is over, evaluate the entire process with the provider against previously set criteria. Measure performance again, measure how well skills are applied on-the-job, the learning effect, and reactions of participants.

You can consider skipping lower level objectives and measurements and instead focus on business impact and performance issues only. However, all four levels help define the course objectives more precisely and link the course material to training imperatives more effectively.

Measuring training effectiveness essentially focuses on a range of pre-course sub-processes. If you or the ESL provider cannot execute this important step or you are interested in a third party’s point of view; then engage a consultant with the skills and knowledge to guide this process. A third-party can help you to design and implement effective ESL training and thereby assist your department in making a valid business case for training to the Board and other Executives.

ESL Training: Expense or Investment?

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When companies consider English language training for their employees in China and Hong Kong, they increasingly seek out a positive Return on Investment (ROI). However, oftentimes companies do not link this training with the on-the-job-performance. This causes difficulty in assessing the effectiveness of the trainings and frustration for companies and English language training providers alike.

Before exerting efforts to measure training effectiveness, companies should recognize their genuine motives for supplying English Training. This exercise will help to determine either ROI is an essential measure or should be refrained from.

Simply asking, Why do we offer English language training?, allows you to clarify whether your company views English language training as an expense (tactical approach) or investment (strategic approach) and what are the ensuing complementary steps.

If you agree with one or more of the following statements, then your company most likely perceives training as an expense and probably provides English language training each year regardless of the business impact:
• English language training is a type of reward for the best performers.
• English language training is part of a development plan for employees with leadership and/or management potential.
• English language training is part of the company’s retention strategy and employer branding.
• English language training is pursued because competitors are providing this training already.
• The company has an annual budget allocated for employee training initiatives.
• Employees have communicated eagerness to attend English language training in employee surveys.
In this case, measuring satisfaction levels among participants and shopping for cost-effective solutions is appropriate.

On the contrary, if the following reasons apply to you, your company views training as an investment and thus conducts training programs aimed at creating significant measurable difference in on-the-job performance:
• During performance appraisals, employees have identified weak English skills as barriers to their individual performance.
• Supervisors recognize weak English skills as key barriers preventing individuals from achieving goals/objectives and greater performance levels.
In this case, you should certainly strive to calculate ROI after first linking training objectives with the on-the-job performance.

Understanding your approach can help you to effectively manage expectations, and improve your entire training experience and engagement with English language training providers.

HR Business Partner Positions in Asia

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Traditionally, most HR positions were filled with industrial-organizational psychologists, industrial labor relations experts, and liberal arts majors; none of which had much exposure to business and management. However, these days, HR professionals are increasingly required to have an advanced commercial understanding, be more numbers keen instead of numbers phobic, deliver results instead of activities, and act proactively instead of reactively.

As a result, ambiguous HR managers are attending MBA courses or pursuing MSc in psychology or organisational change to gain respect from other functional Executives or to get noticed by the CEO. In the meantime, to offset the meager business IQ in HR departments, former finance professionals (example: Janet LeClair, HR XCEL) or OD specialists (example: Ralph Christensen, Hallmark) are leading the HR transformation.

The future of HR is clearly business focused and value-driven. The most established model to drive value-creation in the HR department is Ulrich’s HR Business Partner model composed of four roles; strategic partner, change agent, employee advocate, and administrative expert.

In Asia, more and more HR departments create “a position” of “HR Business Partner”. Below is an average post assembled after reviewing just a few vacant positions advertised in November 2007 on monster.com for analysis. It is worthwhile to review how Ulrich’s model has been adopted and which and how roles defined by this model are addressed with this position.

For every responsibility and requirement of “HR Business Partner”, I ascribed a number or letter which will be referred to in the detailed review below:

Key Responsibilities:
• Act as a strategic HR business partner/subject matter expert to the business units to achieve organizational strategies and objectives (1)(2),
• Provide value-added services for efficient & smooth management of the business (1),
• Provide front line coverage to a portfolio of internal clients including recruitment, employee relations, C&B, performance management, coaching, and training and development to satisfy their needs (2),
• Champion employee engagement and provide support for employees' growth and development (2),
• Facilitate and coach change management and organizational development initiatives (3), and
• Manage the day-to-day HR operation (4).

Key Requirements:
• Degree in Human Resource Management (a),
• Minimum of 4 years experience as a HR generalist (b),
• Experience in Change Management is preferred (c),
• Solid knowledge of labor law and HR policies, processes, and procedures (d),
• Comprehensive knowledge of progressive compensation practices and strategies (e),
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills (f),
• Customer focused and service oriented with a pleasant and assertive personality (g),
• Self-driven individual with creative approach to resolving work issues (h), and
• Hands-on and results-oriented (i).

Review:
Strategic Partner Role
The responsibility identified as (1) focuses on a candidate’s ability to contribute as a Strategic Partner. The obvious requirements connected to this role are (i) while (a) and (b) are very desirable but not essential. Although this role may benefit from solid generalist HR expertise, a strong understanding of the business unit and credibility with senior business leaders are the prerequisites to success. However, both of them have not been included under requirements. Other key competencies omitted include:
• Ability to design and deliver a culture-based HR strategy that links the internal culture to the requirements of external customers and the business strategy,
• Track record of contributing to business decision making by critiquing the existing strategy through creating a personal vision for the future of the business and by raising the standard of strategic thinking in the management team,
• Capacity to develop knowledge of each component of the business value chain and its integration quickly,
• Ability to develop knowledge of how the company creates value through portfolio management and meeting requirements of the competitive marketplace, and
• Toolkit to measure results of every stage of the HR value proposition.

Also, the key behaviors needed to be successful in this role include for example organizational awareness, problem-solving skills, working effectively in teams, and risk taking. The jobholder needs to focus on added-value and tailored solutions. However, none of these requirements have been listed.

Employee Champion Role
The responsibility identified as (2) focuses on acting as an employee champion which requires deep HR technical expertise within a particular discipline. The important requirements essential for this role include (a), (d), (e), (f), and (g). Mistakenly however, this role places too much emphasis on the employees’ needs and therefore pushes organizational learning and development in the background.

The key behaviors needed are inner drive, influencing skills, analytical thinking, and an ability to build trusting relationships, none of which have been mentioned. The jobholder needs to focus on assessing and balancing competing values (company versus employees) while ensuring compliance; not mentioned either.

Change Agent Role
The responsibility identified as (3) clearly points out the role of a change agent. The corresponding requirements listed include (f), (g), (h), (i) and certainly (c) which would require further details to be of value in the screening process and thereby allow a more precise assessment of the scope of experience.

Important elements of this role excluded from the requirements are:
• Internal consultant’s abilities, analytical skills, influencing/negotiation skills, teamwork capability, and creative thinking,
• Behavioral characteristics like innovativeness/flexibility, proactiveness, and risk taking, and
• Jobholder’s focus on planning and implementing intervention to achieve change quickly.

Administrative Expert Role
The responsibility identified as (4) refers to an administrative expert role which requires manager’s know-how to deliver tangible outputs within budgetary and resource constraints. The critical requirements for this post involve (f), (g), (h), and (i). The key behaviors needed to do so are team leadership, initiative, and holding people accountable. The jobholder’s focus needs to be on delivery and cost control. Both aspects have been left out however.

In conclusion, all four roles are squeezed into one position creating a set of unrealistic responsibilities along with different skills and behaviors. Furthermore, such HR Business Partner positions are simply “old wine in a new bottle” rather than positions designed to deliver value-added HR. As long as business acumen or a track record of impacting an organization’s value creation is not part of the person specification, then there is no need to introduce a new term for HR posts.

Social Responsibility and HRM

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On December 4th, Hong Kong’s Cyberport hosted “Cyberport Venture Capital Forum 2007”. This year’s theme, “Building Creative Businesses that Can Do Well and Do Good” attracted a number of quality speakers sharing their approaches to creating a double-bottom line; a social return on investment (SRI) and traditional economic return on investment (ROI). As in the past, this forum also focused on entrepreneurial ventures, their challenges, and “best practices”. A few key points from that day include:
• The Chinese proverb, “Give a man fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” was the motto communicated by several speakers. The essence of social entrepreneurship lies in creating bottom-line value through solving social problems (for example illiteracy) as opposed to disbursing shares of a company’s profit to various organizations that offer fish-like support (typical for large corporations).
• The entrepreneur’s and investor’s value system and vision determine whether or not they will get involved in social entrepreneurship.
• The entrepreneur’s approach to managing his/her people fairly is a prerequisite of social entrepreneurship.
• Social responsibility can become part of a company’s marketing/branding effort.

Jumping from these key points to strategic HRM, some conclusions drawn include:
• Social responsibility not only resonates with local communities, underprivileged individuals or minority members, but also drives a company’s workforce initiatives including, for example, increasing financial literacy and skills set of low-wage employees or offering them stock-ownership.
• In terms of implementation of any HR initiative, any entrepreneurial company is at an advantage vis-à-vis a corporate giant because the manager/entrepreneur is usually the “owner” of the initiative from the onset. Therefore, every initiative enjoys conviction through “management buy-in” to make it happen.
• To deliver social impact, a company needs to achieve critical mass either in terms of revenues, profits, and/or customer base. Otherwise, the contribution is insignificant. The metrics challenge and the pressure to deliver value/impact exists for any activity.

By the way, the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference held in Malaysia has integrated pitch session for social entrepreneurs seeking investment.

Intro

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Welcome to breakpoint HR!

breakpoint HR was set up to discuss the potential of HRM to impact wealth creation in any business today. Companies create wealth by converting talents, knowledge, and relationships into intangibles like organizational capabilities, brands, and customer base.

This blog brings together observations, ideas, and thoughts on HR applications in businesses of any size and phase of growth in order to:
• Uphold entrepreneurialism in established “well-oiled” companies,
• Remove the bias between HR, finance, and marketing; and
• Bridge the gap between theory and practice.

breakpoint HR is hosted by Magdalena Meller, an independent thinker, a “T-shaped” person, and an avid “cross-pollinator” between disciplines and industries.

Magdalena’s HR agenda spans between strategic and results-oriented HR, business intelligence, and systems-thinking. She supports establishing performance-driven culture and differentiating between high and low performers in all HR initiatives. Magdalena is also a strong backer for continuous organizational improvement and individual self-development.

Opinions expressed in this blog are solely that of Magdalena. All material is copyrighted.