Ways for HR to support Innovation

How can human resource professionals become true strategic business partners, contributing to the heart of their firm’s growth agenda? One key answer to this perennial question is to have a deep understanding of the innovation process as well as practical ways to support it. Corporate innovation can be defined as new ideas and actions that result in a new product or service, process improvement or business model. This article looks at specific ways in which HR can become a catalyst for innovation rather than observe from the sidelines or be called upon to implement limited and sometimes poorly conceived objectives.

There are several primary roles human resources can play to make an impact on corporate innovation:
• Shaping the employee life cycle.
• Providing coaching and competencies training for leaders.
• Setting the stage for global innovation.

Shaping the Employee Life Cycle
HR affects the life cycle of each employee--from recruiting and retention to termination or retirement. In a company that seeks to grow through innovation, HR professionals must hire, develop and retain the right people to make things happen. In fact, every stage of the employee life cycle can have an impact on innovation, positive or negative, and it is often up to HR to understand the strategic impact of its role and how it can best contribute.

Coaching and Competencies for Leaders
HR professionals will always have a place at the strategy table with executives if they understand how to grow a business and what the common obstacles are likely to be. When HR knows how to stimulate executives to provide an inspirational example and to construct a hothouse organizational climate in which innovative projects can rapidly take root and grow, it will have their respectful attention.

There are a number of leadership competencies that foster innovation. HR can take the lead in introducing these to the executive team and using a particular combination that suits the organization’s corporate culture and history, customer requirements and the personalities of the people involved.

Setting the Stage for Global Innovation
HR has the means at its disposal to foster the dissemination of innovative products and processes globally. Although management of the international assignment cycle is often delegated at least in part to outside vendors, it can be utilized strategically to support global innovation. Likewise, HR professionals are in a position to remind their executive colleagues that innovation usually has the greatest impact on the bottom line when it is leveraged on a global scale.

Conclusion
HR professionals can become innovation leaders in their own right if they utilize the levers already available to them, including the employee life cycle, leadership competencies and the management of international assignments. They can also learn to help their executive colleagues avoid silver bullet solutions and short-lived initiatives, promoting instead a steady and comprehensive approach to a complex challenge that is at the core of value creation and sustained business growth.

The War for Talent

•Latest research predicts a shortage of 1 million skilled workers by 2020
•By the year end, for every 2 workers leaving the workforce, only 1 will enter
•2.6 new jobs are expected to be created for every person entering the workforce
•Younger workers are now bosses of the older workers

This is the situation in the battle field are you ready????

The most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talent: smart, sophisticated business-people who are technologically literate, globally astute, and operationally agile.

Talent really does matter – for example “top software developers are more productive than an average software developer not by 10x, 100x, or even 1000x … but 10,000x” Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Scientist, Microsoft.

The war for talent is fierce, no body is taking prisoners; and is likely to become more so with the massive number of employees retiring in the next five years. Top organizations no longer want the tag of “employer of choice” they are adopting to more rigorous strategy of attracting and retaining the right employees through branding.”

Traditional workforce planning is being replaced by talent strategies and skills gap analysis. Once they determine the gap, it becomes clear what talent they need to hire, to layoff, or to develop or transfer internally. One can no longer sit and relax if things are working smoothly, its time we followed Murphy’s Law “if everything is working perfectly it invariably means that you have overlooked something” yes, this is the kind of skepticism that will keep you and your company afloat in this fierce battle, where no one is ready to grant an inch.

Now is the time that one has to shake up the whole organization; filter it and separate the “go getters” from the “flatters”. For if you allow yourself to be flattered (read: fooled) then tomorrow when your company faces the crunch you’ll be the least flattered. When you set out in search for these talents remember; you’ll not find them strolling in the corridor of popularity in the contrary you’ll find them alone… working away. It will be your job to make them a part of the workforce without hurting their productivity.

Traditional marketing policies have to be adapted to make your company attractive to the right kind of people. You being a “successful” company may be attractive to your clients but it does not convey to your employees how much of that success are you ready to share with the people who are helping you to achieve it. Your employees need to view you as a place of” continuous learning, work-life balance, personally-fulfilling roles and innovative reward and recognition programs.

The amount you invest in selling yourself to your clients has to be complemented equally in terms of money and energy for selling yourself to your employees. It’s not very far away when you’ll need to hire HR managers with marketing skills…. Yes you can laugh, but so did the world when they were first informed that the world is round.

The battle field is ready; the swords are drown the fight is on. So be prepared remember that the fight is not meant to be easy. “Resources are scarce” we have heard that since ages; now is the time that we do something about it. So check your arsenal. Prepare you battle cry and fight for tomorrow as if there is no

Improving Sales Performance

The sales staff of any organization plays a vital role in not just representing the Company to its customers but also in pushing sales and meetings the Company's crucial sales targets. If there is one department that gains tremendously through training and morale boosting, it is undoubtedly the sales department.

Why Training Is Essential?

Devising a well equipped training programme goes a long way in improving an employee's overall job performance which would otherwise improve only through years of work experience. Therefore, sales training is really a means to an end - reaching high job performance levels as early as possible. Even though some believe that salesmanship is an art which cannot be acquired through training, there are still some arguments in favour of sales training.

Here are some advantages of offering regular training to your sales staff -

Training Can Create A Successful Salesperson: Despite the common belief that a salesman is born and not made, experiences have shown that just like other professional activities, the art of selling can also be acquired and learnt through proper performance based training.

Morale Boosting: Whether we talk about a new sales personnel or an experienced sales staff member, training enables them to perform better. Knowing that your Company cares for you and wants to help you improve your skill sets can be a great morale booster thus, creating loyal employees. Add to this the fact that, new sales staff members can pick up the job quickly if given the right training and encouragement.

Recruitment & Selection: costs decline because of regular and effective training, Moreover, the rate of sales personnel turnover also shows a downward fall if the Company includes regular training in its agenda.

Company Policies and regulations: No matter what the selling process might entail, to develop a well informed sales team, it is important to acquaint the sales staff with all Company policies, rules and regulations.

Product Knowledge: A well devised sales training programme can improve the salesman's overall product knowledge. Knowing the product well and understanding its uses, features and benefits can help the salesman to sell the product with extra ease, confidence and belief. A well trained and informed sales person can help in giving the customer useful advice and assistance as well as the fullest possible satisfaction that comes from buying a good product.

Unification of Sales Efforts: With a trained sales person, supervision becomes much easier and all different kinds of sales activities such as advertising, publicity etc can be effectively unified.

Reduction in Wastages: Trained sales personnel are able to minimize wastages in unnecessary traveling and spend more time in actual selling activities. They are also able to concentrate on accounts which have the greatest potential.

Every organisation today, small or large, it recognising the importance of sales training and is including the same in its Company policies. If you haven't already, this is the right time to start training your employees.

Employer Branding – A New HR arena

This is a market oriented era. If you have a good brand value in market, you will get good response if not; it’s very difficult to convince people.

From an HR point of view branding is very important. If your organization has a good brand image in the market, it will help you in getting right workforce at right time and at the same time you will have a control over the employee cost. An organization with no brand name has to shell out lots of money to attract and retain the right candidate.

Branding can be done in two ways: (1) External Branding and (2) Internal Branding.

Lots of factors may influence the branding strategy of an organization, like A) Nature of Business B) Nature of market C) Target reception D) Budget flexibility E) Long term mission of the organization F) Organizational structure. Etc. These are the few to count on but there may be many as per the business.

External Branding
External branding refers to branding which is done by using external sources and which may (or may not) require some investment in monetary or other forms. Let’s see the different means of doing external branding.

(a) Use of Job Sites – As HR the first thing which comes to the mind is recruitment, so Job sites also offer good branding opportunities through different means like Pop ups, pop ins etc. It’s always better to go for pop ins as most of web browsers come with pop-up blockers.
(b) Banners – Banners are also a good mean for branding. Banners can be of both types’ means Online Banner and Street banners. By Online banner, your organization name will be flashed on different web pages as per your choice and price. Street banners are good for bigger requirements.
(c) Road Shows – Road shows are also an important mean for creating brand awareness. You can organize talks, presentations, seminars etc. for attracting people towards your organization.
(d) Corporate Social Responsibility – Corporate social responsibility refers to corporate getting associated with society for some noble cause. The association can be in any mode either getting associated with a Charitable Trust or a NGO or some other public venture. Corporate can align and attach with any of these and share the stage. Always keep in mind that choose as per you organization status meaning if you are a small firm, do associate with a medium sized organization and if medium you can align with either of these- large or medium. Idea should be you get a nice coverage in the popularity cake.
(e) Public Events – Public events are one of the major ways of creating a brand image. An organization can participate in any of the public event and assuring that it does not get disappeared in the crowd of many brands or big names.
(f) Newspapers – Branding can be done through newspapers as well. If you target the local public, you can go for advertisements considering the individual day circulation, target readers, rapport of newspaper, type of newspaper etc. If you target only to employ people for your workforce requirement, you can place job Ads which may seem expensive at the first glance but in terms of attracting the correct workforce, it can do magic.
(g) Email – For mail ids related to job portals, you can create an auto reply which can contain brief description of the key aspects of candidate’s and public interest and at the same time introducing your company to the public. It should be informative as well as crispy so that the audience reads it and just doesn’t do Shift Delete.
(h) Tagline – Create a nice, attractive tagline or a punch line for your brand and give it a significant visibility in all your branding efforts. The tag line should be in accordance with your organization values, goals, work etc. so that it reflects an overall image of the brand everywhere.
(i) Align with celebrity – Aligning with a celebrity is also a good way of creating a brand image. But this may cost you big bucks and ultimately increasing your cost dramatically. This is an expensive method of branding.

Internal Branding
Internal Branding is comparatively a cheaper way of branding. You can use your internal organizational staff for this purpose.

(a) Front Office – Always pay attention to your front office because first impression is last impression. It should be kept neat and clean with a pleasant receptionist who always maintains freshness and welcomes the guests with courtesy.
(b) Stays Interview - HR can always conduct stay interviews in which they can interact with the employee and ask them regarding their career prospects, there alignment with the company, there feedback regarding their concerned departments, etc. These feedbacks can be analyzed and used for different purposes by which you can create an internal brand image of the country.
(c) Exit Interview – An exit always carries a fair chance of initiating the chain reaction among the employees so always be very careful in analyzing the exiting reasons so that you can overcome the justified ones in the future.
(d) Employee Satisfaction – Employee satisfaction is always very important for any organization to grow. A satisfied employee is a productive employee. If your employee is satisfied, you can relax because they will create a good and positive rapport for the company in the market outside.
(e) Policy Information – Always design your policies very strategically. A policy should be designed in such a way that it holds good even after a long period of time. A frequent internal policy change sends a message to the outer world that the company is not consistent and knowledgeable and reliable.
(f) Customer Orientation – Customers are always the most important factors. Always keep your workforce motivated towards delivery of customer oriented services. Customers can be of either type, internal or external.
(g) Employee Participation – Always try to ensure the maximum participation from the employee side, either in terms of internal events participation or external events.
(h) Trained Employees – Always ensure proper training of employees before they are engaged in work. The training should be in all the aspects like policies, vision, mission, organization. This will project a good picture of organization on the new employee.

These are few to count with but based on the requirement and strategy, the list may increase or shorten.

Competency based development

Everyone today is talking about competency based development. Let’s start from the beginning, i.e. the meaning of competency. There are many definitions of competency doing rounds, for the article we’ll look at competency as a trait or characteristic that allows an individual to successfully accomplish work or task assigned. These characteristics are the culmination of individual’s; skills, knowledge and attributes. The traits or characteristics are known as competency only and only if they allow or result in superior performance.

The next question is often asked why use competency as the predictor of performance? Why not simply look at the individual’s performance?

Well the answer is simple while in the short term which might mean in the current role the performance of the individual might be a good indicator but for future performance competency is not only a better option but more often than not the only option. The reason being that; people perform tasks or jobs using their competency to achieve desired results. While work or jobs might change, competencies are of more enduring nature and immune to change in the job or work context. To summarize competencies are what individuals use to perform successfully and without it consistent performance is not possible.

Now that we have attempted to state the meaning of competency we take on our next important phrase “employee development” is the pursuit of any activity that leads to continuous learning, personal growth, and which contributes to the achievement of both an individual’s and their employer’s or organization’s objective(s) on the longer term.

Keeping the above two definition in mind we have tried to list down certain steps which might be used work towards doing a pilot and then institutionalize competency based employee development.

The Background
• Identify a champion, target employees, and structural framework for an employee development process
• Assess the need for a competency development process; get an estimate for the organization’s competency needs
• Complete employee competency assessments and define estimates of target employees’ competency acquisition needs.(A SWAT of the target group’s competencies)

The Plan and Implementation
• Understand the target groups “personal aspirations”
• Develop a plan for implementation of the competency based employee development services
• Brief all stake holders and obtain resource support to implement the start-up process plan
• Create a steering committee (there should be representatives from all stat holders)
Implement and evaluate the start-up process

The follow up
• Make case studies of the implementation and spread the learning’s amongst the stake holders
• Institutionalize the learning and take the process to a larger group

How to build an engaged workforce?

You must be really surprised with the high attrition in your organization despite paying such good packages and must be wondering that why the competitors are not facing the same.

The scenario has completely changed and it’s no longer the good package that builds up a committed workforce.

The employee longs for much more than the just the salary that he takes home. The concept that plays a very important role in today’s scenario is Employee Engagement.

So what’s this Employee Engagement?

It’s the psychological commitment of the employees to the assigned task. It means that how well an employee relates himself to his work, how dedicated the employee is towards his work and so on.

The primary behaviors of engaged employees are
• Speaking positively about the organization to coworkers, potential employees and customers,
• Having a strong desire to be a member of the organization,
• Exerting extra effort to contribute to the organization’s success.

The association of the candidate with the organization begins from the day when he’s given the offer letter.

• The candidate should be made feel that he is a new member in the family. The time lag between the joining date and the offer letter should be well managed by the HR
• A New Year mail or birthday card though seem to be a very small thing but it really has an impact
• A new entrant must feel welcomed it does not call for standing at the entrance and greeting him with a garland. What we are talking about is that before the actual joining of the entrant a proper seat and all the essentials that he needs for carrying out his task should be made available
• There should be proper structured inductions, which make the employee fully aware of the environment he’s entering into. Thus it can be said that the task of getting your employees engaged begins from Day 1

Now after the first day initiative, let’s see the essentials that make the workforce engaged:-

• The employees must be fully clear with what is expected out of him unless and until he knows what the organization expects out of him he won’t be able to give his 100%
• Unless and until the boss lends the helping hand whenever the subordinate needs it don’t expect your workforce to be engaged The materials and the equipments those are essential for carrying out the task by the employees should be provided to them
• The peers should be supportive enough and the whole team should function efficiently The employees should be informed at a regular interval about their performances and due arrangements should be made which help them overcome their loopholes
• Fair and appropriate reward, recognition and incentive systems it increase the trust of the employees in the management and thus adding to the motivation and the level of commitment towards the organization

Besides the above listed one many other factors might be affecting the engagement level depending on the particular business requirement. Don’t forget upon the birthday bashes, annual functions and other small - small events that add to the motivation level of the employees and give them a good break from their hectic work life. The employee engagement requires a two-way relationship between the employer and the employee.

Do listen to the ideas of the employees and acknowledge them it really adds to their morale and the confidence level. Work upon the engagement process and see wonders happening in your organization. It will really make a difference try it out.

EXIT INTERVIEW- Purpose, Process and Format

Gone are the days when people use to stick to one job for rest of their life. The trust is lost and the faith is lost as well from both sides. If an employer is having a policy of hire and fire, employees are also free to change their jobs whenever they want. As we need experts to take hiring interviews…we also need experts to take EXIT Interviews. Not everyone can take exit interview.

Purpose While attrition is a natural process for organizations, replacing employees is expensive. The cost goes beyond merely placing an advertisement for the opening in a newspaper. It includes training a new employee, staff time for selecting a new employee, lost productivity while the position is open and lost productivity until the new employee gets up to speed. Understanding why people voluntarily leave the company can provide an opportunity for the firm to make changes to reduce turnover rates -- and reduce the associated costs.

The exit interview serves a number of important functions. When trends in voluntary separations are tracked, the firm may be provided valuable insights on discrimination, training & development, lack of opportunities, concerns relating to benefits & compensation etc.

Conducting the Interview HR managers are a critical part of the separation process. Exit interviews are traditionally conducted by HR staff members with the knowledge and input of the immediate manger of the departing employee. Using HR managers as interviewers, improves the chance employees will open up and provide more valuable feedback. One need to ensure that exit interview is not taken by same department manager or same HR representative of the employee, otherwise employee will not open up or end up with arguments.

There are a number of key issues to keep in mind. The interviewer should always begin the process on a positive note - perhaps by offering a thank you for the employee's service to the organization. And above all, the employee should always be treated with dignity and respect. In some sensitive situations, employees may even be asked how they would like their departure to be handled with peers. It is important for every organization to ensure that all employees leaving the company (especially those leaving for disciplinary reasons or lack of performance) have been provided due process. Every individual must be given the opportunity to have his or her side of the issue heard. It is always important to provide documentation. If the employee has resigned, a letter of resignation should be included with the termination paperwork.

The primary key to an effective exit interview is preparation. The planning becomes an essential component of success in conducting the exit interview. Interviewers should plan out issues to be covered and the questions to be asked. Structured interviews are recommended with the use of questions prepared in advance.

Introspection/ Probing the Reasons Interviewers usually want to determine the real reasons of voluntary separations. This provides an opportunity to make changes - particularly when the separation may also be impacting other people. For example, management is often cited as a common reason people leave the organization. It is good for the company to know the reasons so they can take corrective action.

It is critical to get beyond the "politically correct" reason that the majority of employees provide when leaving a position. The critical portion of the interview should probe the employee for feedback about the working conditions and how they might be improved.

Conclusion With the recognition exit interviews can provide an opportunity for valuable feedback, new approaches are being used. Trends in exit interviews today include outsourcing and automated surveys. Some companies have opted to delegate the exit interview to a third party firm that specializes in conducting these interviews. The rationale is departing employees may be more open and honest with an objective third party. These interviewers are often trained in asking probing questions and can elicit more information.

The information solicited from the exit interview is only valuable if it used. It must be disseminated to the appropriate people within the organization and then actually used to make positive changes. Otherwise, the company has missed a valuable opportunity.