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Special Edition

BUDDING PROFESSIONALPOINT OF VIEW

THE

Special Edition June 2015

2Table of Contents

Editorial 3

Article by student -IQ or EQ for a Leader 4

Snippets-HR Now & Next 7

• TV Rao on L&D 7

• Soni Bhattacharya on L&D 8

• Maggie on Payroll 9

• Jayanth on Recognition 10

• Ashish Mittal on HR Auditing 13

The Conundrum 14

• Nurturing and Managing Gen Y workforce 14

From the world of HR 15

Student Community Updates 17

• Student connect program 17

• Project swayamvar 18

3Editorial

Pursuing excellence with an open mind. A mind open to explore and ex-periment. A mind willing to test new waters and cross the boundaries. This helps the person to learn and unlearn.

Today, the business world has become so volatile that nothing can be guar-anteed to stay forever. There is always a fear of losing out in the great race to become the No.1. Thus, the need to attain the quality of being agile has become important more than ever. The question is, how do we attain this quality?

As part of the student body of an organization like NHRD, we would like to facilitate events and competitions that focus on the quality of agility. We invite your thoughts on how we could do this beginning with the stu-dent community in and around Bangalore.

This issue begins with the thoughts of Avik Sengupta, XIME on Emotional Quotient.

We are proud to include a section where experts from the industry pos-sessing varied experience in various domains have come forward and shared their thoughts on their area of expertise.The conundrum features a case study written by Vinitha A Johny.

4IQ or EQ for a Leader

Avik SenguptaXavier Institute Of Management & Entrepreneurship

That afternoon my smartphone buzzed with a breaking news coming in from one of the news channels about Mahendra Singh Dhoni retiring from the longest format of the game. Next day all the newspapers and print media carried a eulogy about the most successful test captain of the country who was very recently facing the heat for the poor performance of the team down under. But this strange contradiction in public opinion is a part of life for any leader be it in the sports or corporate arena. And this is where a leader needs to exhibit a higher level of emotional intelli-gence in comparison to his followers or team mates (call them by whatever name).Which brings me to the basic question of this article as to what is emotional intelligence and how is it more relevant for a leader? Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate one’s own and other’s emotions. This information has to be then used to guide his own /other’s behavior. Some psychologists rate this as more important than even Intelligence quotient. Imagine a world where you couldn’t un-derstand when a friend was feeling sad or when a co-worker was angry. You would be planning your future course of actions by literally staying clueless of your teammate or partner’s existing feelings. Now that’s dan-gerous because when you are unable to feel the pulse of your coworkers you might end up with very little or negligible support for your actions. And that’s where it really gets tricky for a leader as he has to emphasize and understand his as well as other’s emotions well to take the team along with him. Scan any great leader in the past and present, you will always find them capable of understanding or judging emotions better than oth-ers. That’s what made them great leaders. So what are the signs of an individual high on EI? The most important sign is his ability to influence other’s opinions by gazing at their emo-tions. Take Mahatma Gandhi for example. He was extremely good at in-fluencing people’s present emotions of resentment against the British Raj to guide them to follow a course of action depicted by him to express their ire against the same in a peaceful and legitimate manner.

5So good was he that even Nelson Mandela found himself following the Mahatma’s ideals to guide his war against apartheid in South Africa. Now that’s signature of influencing skills born out of a leader’s emotional intelligence.

Managing one’s own self better than others is also a key hallmark of a leader high on EI. Empathetic listening is one such attribute. Lee Iacocca- former CEO Chrysler Corporation once said-”I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.” Why don’t most ordinary leaders listen? Because they prioritize their emotions higher than others. If one can develop this attribute his EI scores are bound to increase great-ly. Another attribute I can think of is labeling one’s own emotions as and when they come. When anger reigns the mind, the person realizes quickly that it is anger and when it’s extra happiness he is quick brand it as the same. This can greatly help a leader see himself as separate from his emo-tions. Thirdly, a leader with high EI treats criticism as a part of life rather than a life changing event. He only changes those aspects of his characteristics which are important for bringing a better performance rather than trying to entirely change himself according to the critics’ wishes. When Apple decided to reinstate Steve Jobs back as their CEO, the company was strug-gling to make its mark in the industry facing tough competition from rivals like Microsoft. It was the same Steve Jobs who took over after he was asked to leave in favor of a better leader and after he came back there was only a little change in his style of working which at that time investors considered unworthy of a CEO. And the same Steve Jobs took his com-pany to the Apple we know as of today.

6EI is a necessary evil for almost everyone. Psychologists can’t emphasize this fact enough that today in a world of rising competition we are to keep a stable flow of our emotions and keep the negative ones mostly at bay. This is even more important for a leader or a manger aspiring to achieve greatness in his field. As rightly said –“one must know how to manage oneself before managing others”.

REFERENCES1. Psychology.com2. wikipedia

7Snippets- HR Now & NextCompiled by Rachel Mathew and Zeeshan Khateeb

1. What in your opinion is current scenario of Recruitment/Learning & development/Rewards & Recognition/Engagement/Compensation/Technology/Your Area of Expertise?

Recognition and rewards and L&D are good and growing. A lot of inno-vations are taking place.However most of them are in the new economy sectors and still have to catch up among manufacturing and the old economy Industry. There is a need to articulate a good philosophy of making employees feel significant and talented. Recognition and rewards as well as L&D serve this purpose if properly articulated and implemented.

2. What is the future growth & development possibilities in Recruit-ment / Learning & development/Rewards & Recognition / Engagement / Compensation / Technology / Your Area of Expertise?

Learning is continuous and every individual should take charge of his/her own learning and development and be less dependent on HR Depart-ments. Recognition mechanism should change and line managers should be empowered and encouraged to innovate in different forms of recogniz-ing their juniors. There should be a recognition philosophy than a policy.

TV RaoChairman, TVR Learning Syatems

Learning & Development

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1. What in your opinion is current scenario of Learning & development?

In our experience, the scenario is extremely positive and the future looks good. When we started on our journey to offer unique experiential train-ings, often leveraging art-based methods, we met with a lot of skepticism.Many early client contacts were unsure of the possibilities and outcomes of such approaches. I am very happy to note that we are seeing a change in that mindset. Over the years, we have seen a steady growth in demand for our methodologies, as more and more client partners eagerly adopt these. This has helped us now take our offerings to over 60 Fortune100 compa-nies, across 9 countries, in a span of 4 years.We are seeing L&D leaders come to us with much greater understanding of needs and clear expectations, and we are offering them solutions which are both exciting as well as enriching over the longer term. We are using some of the most exciting methodologies in the world - from using Paint-ing in a Negotiation Skills program to 3D Modeling in a Creative Problem Solving Lab to Forum Theatre to look at Conflict Management. And the results are fantastic. We are excited...

2. What are the future growth & development possibilities in Learning & development?The future looks very bright. The Learning & Development space is evolv-ing into a more need-based, outcome-oriented path for enhancement and empowerment. We are seeing greater interest in developing human capital

Most forms of recognition do not require financial support. Similarly employees should be encouraged to take charge of their learning. How about budgeting a 5% CTC of every employee to be used for self directed learning and development with justification of ROI to company?

Soni BhattacharyaFounder & CEO,The painted Sky

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Payroll has always been the less glamorous part of HR, dealing more with numbers than people. In fact, there are quite a few organizations where this sits within Finance rather than HR. But payroll also remains the #1 function that needs to up and running when employees start working for an organization. Naturally the focus on Payroll has been more about accuracy and efficiency rather than adding any bells and whistles.

than ever before, and a demand for effective and impactful interventions that help managers and leaders overcome skill gaps and self-limiting be-haviors. Be it in our experiential trainings, classroom based programs or in Executive Coaching practices, we are noticing a surge of demand.

I think that over the next few years, we will see simultaneous growth and consolidation in our field. We will continue to see a journey up the value curve, and more need for integrated and immersive trainings that take participants on journeys of self-discovery and power. The demand to look beyond the functional, to the behavioral and the strategic will increase as more young managers take up leadership roles. With that will continue the demand for novel approaches and high-impact methods that trans-form the learning experience and make the takeaways stick!

Payroll continues to remain a critical function as the compliance environ-ment organizations operate in becomes more and more complex. As work gets more global and distributed, accounting and paying for work and paying across geographies is becoming a challenge.

Payroll

Maggie Director and co founder, Employee Experts

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As companies innovate on rewarding performance, payroll continues to be the key not only as the execution engine for such reward payments but also the mechanism to ensure companies remain tax compliant. Payroll also continues to be the top function to be outsourced. It is on top of the maturity curve when it comes to outsourcing and also adoption of cloud technologies. Aggregators and vendors in this space are now taking this opportunity to provide value added services to customers. Business in-sights based on payroll data and operational insights on efficiency of this function are some of the analytics leaders in this space are beginning to provide. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Payroll is the original big data that con-tains cultural, work style and economic indicators waiting to be tapped into. That will be the next big journey for payroll.

Short Analysis of Recognition Practices

Jayanth Entrepreneur

Over the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about Indian companies adopting global best practices in a number of management ar-eas. One of the questions, clients invariably ask me when I meet with them, is to find out how other Indian companies are adopting “Recogni-tion” and how much they spend on “Recogni-tion”. I did an analysis of 30 large companies in different industries I had met with (think of it as the Sensex companies for Recognition),

and collected some information about their Recognition activities and spends. Here are some of the key findings:

111) RECOGNITION ADOPTION:Adoption of Recognition as a strategic tool varies from being virtually non-existent (in one case) to being heavily integrated within their culture (in 2 companies, the practices seem to be robust enough to the extent, that my colleague and President of the Recognition Management Institute (www.realrecognition.com), Roy Saunderson (http://rideau.com/blogs/roy-saunderson), believes that they could be a candidate for RPI’s Recog-nition Best Practices award (www.recognition.org – Recognition Profes-sionals International), if the companies applied.

2) RECOGNITION SPEND:Not surprisingly, the spend on Recognition is much lower than the North American standard of over 2% of annual Payroll costs. The annual Rec-ognition spends in India range from .002% to about 1% of payroll costs, with the average and median both around 0.5% of payroll costs. To put the figures in perspective, if a company has about 15,000 employees and an average employee salary of INR 200,000 per annum, then they would be spending around INR 1.5 Crores annually on various Recognition ini-tiatives. A number of companies on my list are probably spending more indirectly (e.g. travel costs related to big recognition events, additional travel costs for overseas holidays etc.), but I have used conservative fig-ures based on whatever credible information I had with me.

3) RECOGNITIONREACH:A bulk of the Recognition spend (over 70% in most companies) is focused on the top performers (10-15% of the employee population). This is an area companies have to really think about and determine how they can adopt Recognition in a manner that can touch a larger employee popula-tion – I am not professing recognizing and awarding employees for things that don’t merit recognition, but companies need to design recognition programs to recognize employees for exhibiting behaviours/company val-ues and doing activities that drive towards the vision and business objec-tives. The focus currently seems squarely focused on business performance providing very few opportunities for the non-superstars to get recognized in a meaningful manner.

124) AWARDS:The most popular award for top performers is an international holiday with Bangkok clearly being the favourite destination. Other popular des-tinations were Goa, Dubai and Malaysia/Singapore. Cash and Cash equiv-alent awards are very popular and extensively used.

5) RECOGNITION PROGRAM OWNERS:Most of the Recognition programs seem to be driven by the HR resources supporting a business rather than by the line managers in the business. System adoption for Recognition programs is minimal (a few companies use their intranet and a simple plug-in solution to automate some of the processes), with a bulk of process around nominating and awarding em-ployees being done manually by the HR resources. Two companies have adopted a globally proven and robust platform.

THE FUTURE:A structured employee recognition program will be table sakes in a few years in India. The key will be on how well companies are able to build a culture of recognition and focus on the recognition component rather than reward component.

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1.What is in your opinion the current scenario of HR auditing?In today’s scenario, HR audit has become an integral part of doing busi-ness & establishes process that assesses the change in HR’s role & activi-ties, discusses the external & internal forces affecting the business includ-ing risk management & optimum use of HR resources.HR function as such began more as a clerical function & quite contrary is now viewed as a strategic partner in planning & attaining organizational policies & goals. In today’s competitive business environment, wherein there are high pressures from the Client / stakeholders, HR department has to accept the challenge of delivering more with less, while contribut-ing high value toward business goals. Currently, HR is unable to keep pace with business. HR professionals need reskilling & a vital need for reinventing the role of HR is exceptionally critical. 2.What are the future growth and development possibilities in HR Au-diting?As Organizations achieve increased revenue & higher profitability with scarcer staff, a critical element of the HR audit would be a right under-standing of the employment risks faced by the organization, a measure-ment of the risk, and methods to eliminate, mitigate, or manage these risks. HR Audit should provide measurements & metrics to the top manage-ment to make business decisions. It would continue to throw light on the key HR processes and practices which need to be adaptive and responsive to business changes, as these practices have huge impact on employee mo-rale, performance & delivery.

Ashish MittalDeputy General Manager - HR, Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd

14The Conundrum

Nurturing and Managing Gen Y workforceSam worked as a Senior Consultant at Lead Consulting Solutions, CA. He was a seasoned professional with 10+ years of experience and had suc-cessfully provided consulting support to clients across various business sectors. However, Sam was described as an autocratic and bossy person by his colleagues.

Joseph, a University Graduate joined Lead Consulting Solutions as a Junior Consultant. Sam was assigned as his mentor. After few days, Jo-seph started to feel that the opportunity to learn at Lead was very nar-row as he was not receiving enough practical exposure related to his job. He approached Sam with his concern but Sam replied to him say-ing “Sorry Joseph!! I cannot assign you to support any of my clients at such an early stage and moreover any mistake or irresponsible behav-ior from your end may affect my reputation”. He assigned few backend jobs to him and asked him to learn the basics of performing a job first.Though Joseph took the advice on a positive note, but after few days the enthusiasm and creativity levels in Joseph’s work drastically fell. He began to doubt his abilities and concluded that he will never be able to handle the tasks that he was hired for. Feeling depressed over this, he finally quit the job at Lead.1. Why do you think Sam did not pay attention to Joseph’s concern?2. What do you think Joseph should have done rather than quitting? 3. Suggest a technique to solve this issue faced by Gen Y’s in several organizations

Write in your answers to vinitha.aj@employeeexperts.com

Vinitha A Johny Consultant, Employee Experts Solutions Pvt Ltd, BLR

15From the world of HR

To woo employees, govt to review incentives on qualifications:

The centre is planning to review the incentives given to its employees on acquiring higher qualifications while they are in service. All central gov-ernment employees are entitled for a lump-sum incentive on acquiring fresh qualifications. The quantum of incentive varies from Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000 on the basis of qualification. However, it is uniform for all posts irrespective of employee classification, grade or the department. The De-partment of Personnel and Training (DOPT) has been considering in-cluding additional qualifications or deleting some of them from a 16-year-old list. – Economic Times, March 27, 2015

Small cities may beat metro in percentage salary hikes:

To retain talent base in tier II cities, companies are churning out bigger percentage hikes in comparison to metro/tier I locations, say recruiters. Companies expanding into tier II cities and regions such as Punjab,

16Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala and some North-Eastern states. Most organisations that have expanded in tier II and III cities are saving cost by 10-20 per cent, says a NASSCOM report. All this is pushing up demand for talent in tier II locations. Tier II cities have a much lower benchmark of around 30-40 per cent in comparison to big cities/metros. Thus, giving out salary hikes will look higher in percentage but may be lower in absolute increase. –TOI, April 15, 2015

Flipkart’s chief product officer looks to woo global talent:

PunitSoni, the recently appointed chief product officer at India’s largest e-commerce player Flipkart, is a man with mission. Just 3 weeks into his new job, Soni, who had an 8 year of experience at Google launching vari-ous products and helping turn around Motorola Mobility- wants Motorola Mobility- wants to position Flipkart as not only a global tech powerhouse but also on getting amazing talent which is global in nature. His addition along with PeeyushRanjan, another Google veteran is in line with the e-commerce major’s thrust on sharpening its technology play as it taps into talent from Silicon Valley’s fabled tech giants like Google. They are focus-ing on bringing in large number of people from across the globe to work in the organisation and live happily, both professionally and personally.-TOI, May 8, 2015

Aon Hewitt builds HR research initiative with India Inc, academics:

To support world class, India-specific research in the areas of human re-source and leadership, HR consultant Aon Hewitt has built a unique initia-tive along with the companies such as Mahindra& Mahindra, ICICI Bank, Vodafone, Genpact, Deloitte and Essar besides academics from top busi-ness schools. The made-in-India programme will address key HR, talent and people management issue faced by industry leaders and organisation alike. The vision is to bridge the gap between academia and industry im-peratives through data driven robust research that will act as the agenda for organisation to implement at the workplace. –TOI, May 8, 2015

17Student Community Updates

SJCBA, Bangalore in association with NHRD Bangalore organized a Stu-dent connect program in the format of a panel discussion on the topic “Application of Social Media in HR - The IBM Story”. The event was con-ducted on 28th February 2015. Mr.Sanjiv Jain, Associate Director HR at IBM shared some of the practices of IBM with the students. The event was truly a learning experience in to the new practices developing in the field of HR with respect to social media.Rachel Mathew – MSRIM

18SwayamwarI. PROJECT SWAYAMVAR- NHRD Bangalore

One of the endeavors at the National HRD Network, Bangalore Chapter has been to facilitate HR projects for HRStudents. Through this we try to bring a confluence of student trainees, industries / corporate and the academic institutions.“Project Swayamvar” (project Mela) enables corpo-rates to identify students to offer projects to the MBA / MSc HR students. This is one of the approaches towards enhancing people practices in the industry. It also encourages mentorship in organizations. This year, about 100 students registered and about 50+ students were offered HR projects by about 25+companies.The entire endeavor was led by students this year.

A special mention of the student team at XIME who has worked dilligent-ly and contributed immensely to the success of Swayamvar2015!! XIME was kind to host Project Swayamvar for the year

NHRD Bangalore recognizes the efforts of thefollowing student leaders.

Avik Sengupta- XIMESourrendere Manoharan –XIMEAnusha Danamaraju – XIMENipun Kunaboina - XIME

Swayamwar was led by Rachel Mathew and Zeeshan Khateeb.Rachel, Avik and Sourrendre will be supporting the student council as student mentors from this academic year.

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Write your feedback, Submit articles tonhrdstudentconnect@gmail.com

Speak to Rachel - 7829746164, Zeeshan - 9902105377 or Sunitha - 9845318788

Mrinal, NITK,

Surathkal

Jaya,XIME,

BLR

Rachel, MSRIM,

BLR

Ramisha,XIME,

BLR

June 2015 Special Edition Newsletter Compiled by: