Rahul Writes

Your take on HR

Kumar Rahul Tiwary

We had our first lecture for HR, Human Resource and Behavioral Sciences to be precise. The professor who came up to take the class is an industry veteran, with around three dozen years of work experience. He has worked for small Indian family businesses, as well as in big modern firms. No-brainer that we were to be showered by his wisdom.

He asked two basic questions in front of the class:

1.      How do you define the HR as a department, to a layman?

2.      What is special about HR, that we need a separate department?

We had a hard time ahead. Starting from "managing human resources", the junta fought to satisfy him. But no way! At the end, he described the HR function in a manner most unexpected.

He explained that the work of the HR function is the same as that of a mother while bringing up her child: Feeding, nurturing, developing, correcting, counseling, etc. He emphasized a lot on this mother-child relational aspect.

But I think differently. I believe that the HR is just the facilitator of the management policies. It is just a "facilitator", not an organization as a whole. At the end of the day, the line managers are those who make or break the company's culture. The problem in comparing it with mother-child relation is that the employees begin to think as if the HR department is 'responsible' for 'all' their problems. So if a boss doesn't treat a subordinate well, the subordinate will think that the HR department is not working. As employees, we forget to think that we need to bring the issues in front of the HR people, before they can help. In my case, when my HR manager came to know about some issues between me and my colleague, he called us and counseled us. But it can't happen every time. Of course at the end of every year there are performance reviews, where the problems in the organization get reflected. But I have noticed that the employees 'expect' a lot from the HR department, and the main reason behind that expectation is that they perceive the department in line with the 'mother-child' relationships. What is your take? Do you think that the mother-child model for the HR function is OK? If yes, to what extent?

Now is the time to open up the text-books.

Mumbai, 09 July, 2007

Tale of Two Training Managers (T3M)

By Kumar Rahul Tiwary

My experiences with HR (Part-I)

The time goes back when I joined my first job as a graduate engineer trainee (GET). We were three of us, as the first batch in our company. We underwent 5 days of induction training at our corporate office in Kolkata. We met our Training Head, holding the training function for the BU. The induction programme was good and we all were enthusiastic about what was to come next. At the end of 5 days, we were given a treat sort of dinner by the chief, HR and the Training Head. The training manager (let us call him TM1) was very nice, to come to our hotel room to take us for the dinner. There only he gave us our training structure and schedule, for the next one year. We were to undergo one year training, among the three plants of the company.

Location mattered to us at that time, and according to the vicinity with the nearest city, I shall name the three plants as: City Plant (CP), Nearby Plant (NP) and Distant Plant (DP).

That evening, when TM1 came to our hotel room to receive us and gave us the training structure a night before we were to leave for one of the plants, was amusing to us. But what surprised us more was the training structure:

1. We were to undergo one year's training, each one of us in a different plant. We were together for a very short period.
2. We were to rotate between the three plants on an average once in every month.
3. My (Rahul's) training structure was very different from the other two's; I was to undergo training in the Distant Plant (DP) for 3.5 months at a stretch, while the other two guys were to rotate between the City Plant (CP) and Nearby Plant (NP). (It eventually turned out that the duo enjoyed the CP very much, with frequent trips to their homes also).

One of the brave guys couldn't stop himself from asking: "Sir, why are we sent to the plants separately. Why not we three remain together?"

What TM1 said with a smile can make you jump in bewilderment:

"Beggars are not choosers!"

What? At that time, we were too meek with the least egos, therefore we didn't mind. (Later, we came to know that TM1 had a passion for collecting and sharing 'quotations' from great thinkers. But it seems he didn't perfect the art to apply the right thing at the right time. Or did he?)

The young engineer asked again:

"But Sir why Rahul is being sent to the Distant Plant (DP) for 100 days continuously; why is his plans different from us?"

Another shocker, this time in Hindi:

"See, Mujhe jo karna tha maine kar diya, ab tum log kuchh 'jugaad' lagaa sakte ho to lagaa lo" (See, I have done what I had to do, if you can manage to get it changed, try).

Now we gave up, and hurried for the dinner. The dinner was nice, people were nice, but something was not nice .  

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Ultimately it happened that we had a hard time rotating between the three plants. Also, we didn't feel comfortable at any time, alone in the plants where there were very few young people around. Also, the two guys started taking me lightly as they realized that the training manager had already dumped me. I too wondered sometimes whether that was victimization, discrimination, regionalism, racism, or whatever else? (not so seriously of course). I shall cover some more memories of training period separately (this one is about Training Managers). We learnt soon that TM1 left the company to join another (next) one.

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Now let me tell you my experiences with another training manager (let us call him TM2), who succeeded TM1.

Before we could officially finish our training period, the new batch of (three) GETs were to join in. The new training manager TM2, called us (we were two of us remaining by that time) to his cabin one day, and asked us to prepare draft of the training structure for the next batch. Wow! An opportunity to correct the evils?

In the beginning, I wanted each one of us to prepare our drafts of training structure separately, and later on to combine them into a final thing, taking the best parts of each. But when TM1 came to know about my plans, he called both of us and gave a long lecture on the importance of correct team work. We also 'witnessed' his lecture on 'right attitude'. That was a delight at that time. I thought either he had read it somewhere, or he had the potential to become a very successful speaker / lecturer.

Ultimately we made our draft of training structure, incorporating these major corrections:

1. All three trainees to remain together throughout the training year.
2. No rotation; trainees were to finish each plant one by one. That meant, this time they would cover all departments of all plants.
3. Training period in the respective plants to be distributed in proportion of the training infrastructure available with them.
4. No discrimination between the trainees; structure for all three were same.

I was skeptical about implementation of our structure. But TM2 seemed to be more agreeable than anyone else. We came to find later that our structure was implemented with heart and spirits. (All the three GETs which underwent that training structure are still with the company, though I don't claim their loyalty being a function of that training structure.)

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Out of my experiences with the two training managers, I have learnt the following lessons:

1. The importance of “fair decisions”.
2. The importance of employee involvement in decisions.

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1. The importance of “fair decisions”

The decision by TM1 to make different training structures for equal people may not sound a very grave error to you. But they were indeed very important, if you think from the 'point of view of the three trainees'. There was no explanation for that decision; instead there was a comment like "Beggars can’t be choosers”! Do we want out future managers to develop learning this line? The management decisions should be “fair decisions”.

The definition of a 'fair decision' may be debatable, but a lot depends on what our employees think about the decisions. There should not be any discrimination, no favourism; decisions to be made fairly based on facts and figures, which any right minded manager would make when in a position to do so. Decisions, which when we remember afterwards, make us proud. It is very well said and understood that employees are most likely to cooperate with systems and decisions when fair process is followed.

2. The importance of employee involvement in decisions.

TM2 involved the trainees in making training structure for the next batch of trainees. It was a perfect example of employee involvement. It is said that employees generally accept even those decisions which they don't like, if they're involved in the process and understand the logic behind the decision. These are basic human psychology, to feel important, to be treated with respect, to be heard and cared. If you treat your employees as machines with a head, they will work exactly like that. There are instances when the employees were involved in the process of decision making, and they went an extra mile, out of their job responsibilities, to make the plan successful. Treat employees as real people; as they said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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This is first part of "My experiences with HR" series. Your feedback, recollections, suggestions, or corrections are heartily welcome.