HRD Missionary: Preparing 1000 HRD Missionaries: 1000 HRD Missionaries If I am restless about one thing in life that is the way HRD got diluted and the way HRD Managers have functioned...
Saturday, October 27, 2012
HRD Missionary: Preface to the second edition of HRD Missionary
HRD Missionary: Preface to the second edition of HRD Missionary: HRD Missionary (Preface to Second Edition of the book "HRD Missionary" available from www.tvrls.com or tvrls@tvrao.com) In a recen...
HRD Missionary: Some Thoughts on the New HRD Missionary
HRD Missionary: Some Thoughts on the New HRD Missionary: Some Thoughts on the New HRD Missionary T. V. Rao · The New HRD Missionary is not entirely new. It is the HRD Missionary (HR...
Friday, October 26, 2012
Some Thoughts on the New HRD Missionary
Some Thoughts on the New HRD
Missionary
T. V. Rao
·
The
New HRD Missionary is not entirely new. It is the HRD Missionary (HRD-M) or HRD
Facilitator (HRD-F) put in the new format to suit the 21st Century
generation, personality and requirements.
·
Purpose and Tasks: The primary purpose of this HRD-M is
to facilitate the 3 Cs at the individual, dyadic, team, organizational and
societal or community levels. The HRD-M may choose to work at one or more of
these levels – with individuals as individuals to recognise, utilise and
develop their talent; with individuals in relation to their current or future
required roles - to create opportunities for role enrichment, create new roles
for themselves and enhance their role effectiveness; with dyads (boss-subordinate
or senior-junior, employee-customer, manager-direct report, colleague to colleague,
etc. pairs) to restore, enhance and strengthen their bonds through mutual
empowerment, mutual help, problem solving and capacity utilisation and
enhancement; with teams (formal or informal, departments or cross-functional,
task forces, project tams and all other forms of teams temporary or long term)
to enhance their contributions, morale, motivation, synergy, decision making
and problem solving skills and make team work happen and become a source of
empowerment and continuous learning and contribution; with organizations to enhance
organisational health, employee commitment, self diagnostic capabilities and
make it a happy, healthy and empowering place to work; and at societal level
with individuals and groups and societal or community institutions to create a healthy and happy society which
respects people and their competencies irrespective of the caste, creed,
religion and other sources of identity.
·
Methods: The HRD-M may acquire and utilise
various methods including dialogues, coaching, formal teaching or lectures, discourses,
writings, films and videos, internet and YouTube, face book and other social
media and methods, questionnaires, games and exercises, stories, case studies, and
various other interventions and skill building, value clarification, attitude
development, and knowledge accumulating interventions.
·
Values: The HRD-M follows the OCTAPACE
(Openness, Collaboration and team work, Trust, Authenticity, Proactivity,
Autonomy, Confrontation and Experimentation) and other values like Integrity
and Character outlines in the book HRD Missionary. The HRD- M has to be value driven
and attempt constantly to practice these values and seek periodic feedback on
the perceptions of people and use it for renewal and rejuvenation.
·
Affiliation: The new HRD-M should preferably be an independent role holder
without any departmental affiliation and should stand out as an independent
employee with entrepreneurial dispositions. Each HRD-M may work closely with around
50 employees in a corporation or organization (or around 50 families in a community)
and his transaction time with every individual works out to be around 40 hours
per individual for various inputs and interventions. The HRD-M could be a part
of the current organizational structure of the HR or any other allied
department if it provides sufficient autonomy to the person to carry out the above mentioned tasks and
does not involve the Missionary in outsource able and routine administrative
tasks which can be done by anyone with little skill. The HRD- M should not be involved
in incentive schemes, performance appraisals, training administration and such other
tasks that put the HRD-M into interface issues and has chance of denting
his/her credibility as coach and facilitator. In case the HRD-M is already a
part of the existing structure with administrative roles and responsibilities,
she/he should be in a position to negotiate or re-negotiate his roles and responsibilities
and task structure so as to relieve her from day to day routine administrative
tasks and devote entirely to the 3Cs.
·
Power: The HRD-M derives his/her power from the people she/he works
with and on the basis of the nature of work and help she/he provides. In other words
the source of power of the HRD-M is expert power and the power as a coach and
facilitator. The HRD-M has to work constantly to establish and re-establish his
credibility. Continuous learning, dissemination, communication, persuasion and coaching
skills are very critical for the person set out to develop into this role. A thorough
understanding of how people learn and how to make learning enjoyable is an
integral part of the skills etc. of the HRD-M.
·
Time Management: The HRD-M should be constantly aware
of the value of time and be sensitive to the time and talent of other people.
He/she should maintain his/her time logs and review constantly to enhance her/his
value addition in terms of the 3 Cs or in terms of Talent utilization and
development. Hurconomics book by the author provides some insights into the
time and talent management issues.
·
Salaries: The rationale for salaries of the
HRD-M is around 2% to 5% of the CTC of the 50 persons he is serving.
These are some thoughts and in tune
with what are stated in the book HRD Missionary. You are most welcome to add
more points and or raise issues to enable us to evolve a much refined role for
the new HRD-M.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Preparing 1000 HRD Missionaries
1000 HRD Missionaries
If I am
restless about one thing in life that is the way HRD got diluted and the way
HRD Managers have functioned or not functioned. My professional life and
writing provide ample evidence of this. We (Pareek & Rao) started the HRD
Department as a separate entity by separating it out from the Personnel
Department or Function in mid-seventies (thanks to L&T) with glorious
objectives. The main purpose of HRD is to create enabling capabilities in the
organization at the individual, dyadic, team and organizational level;
integrate individual goals with those of the organization; create a culture of
openness and integration and enhance the respect for people in the
organization. In short, competence building, commitment building and culture
building (3Cs). There was no HR Department in India or the US at that time. Training
was being re looked as HRD and being renamed so. Soon in India many companies re-titled
their training as HRD without imbibing any of the HRD concepts we outlined. The
personnel departments also began to rechristen or re-title themselves as Human
Resource Departments (HRD). By mid eighties HRD was filled with confusion: in
some cases new name for T&D and in a few other cases for personnel and in
very few cases with a genuine understanding of the 3Cs. To clear this confusion
we started the Centre for HRD at XLRI. After finding the limitations of a
single Institution to promote the HRD spirit, we started the National HRD
Network and preferred it to cover various sectors as the 3Cs are for all
sectors of the society. It is for the Network I have written the book “HRD
Missionary” in 1990 and made it available along with the book on Excellence
through HRD (with MRR Nair) that described the role of HRD Manager. After
finding the limitation of professional bodies in doing research and pursuing
education we started the Academy of HRD. Liberalisation in India brought many
new opportunities for HRD Professionals to make an impact and build the new
profession and its knowledge base. However things have not moved the way we anticipated.
While a lot of new titles and new approaches in HRD surfaced in the last 20
years, they rarely measured up to the mission of HRD we envisaged in mid
seventies. Partly the Management schools did not adequately prepare the new
generation fully to perform these roles and many CEOs have not even understood
what roles the HRD Missionaries were envisaged to play. A series of surveys
conducted by us to study the perceptions of line managers at around ten years
interval three times in the last thirty years indicated a gradual decline in
the perceived performance and image of HRD Managers and HRD function.
Symbolically the article that appeared in the International scene “Why we Hate
HR?” (Keith Hammonds, 2005) seemed to be so true in India too in spite of the
fact we always considered India as ahead of other countries in terms of conceptualising
and designing HR departments. What I envisaged in the first edition of the HRD
Missionary seemed to become true world wide by 2005, and India in 2012 is no exception
to this.
In many companies
HRD Professionals don’t know: how to do competency mapping, how to design and
conduct Assessment and Development centres or how to conduct employee engagement
or organizational health surveys, how to ensure that L&D activities give a
good ROI; how to design an on boarding or induction and integration program or
how to undertake organizational diagnosis or organizational restructuring and
role redefinition exercises. They are constantly in need of external consultants
to do the same for them. A number of HRD Managers are still struggling with performance
appraisals and applications of normal curves to them. A few other HRD managers particularly
in some of the Public Sector are filling their time floating tenders to do HRD
work for them and avoid vigilance issues.
The state of
HRD in India is rather painful. Looking at the state of affairs some time I am
even tempted to suggest that it is time for some of the organizations to do
away with such HRD departments whose main job seem to be to rely on outside interventions
than to make every manager a self-driven HRD manager to take care of their own
3Cs. The bodies like NHRDN, NIPM, ISTD, AIMA and CII are doing some good work sporadically
but are nowhere near what is needed. The HRD Competency model developed by
NHRDN and CII, the Doctorates produced by AHRD, the Journal started by NHRDN focusing on impressive topics like leadership, Institution building etc.; the occasional
theme based conferences of ISTD & NIPM are small contributions but have not
yet touched even an iota of the need for genuine HRD. In a recent presentation made
at IIM Lucknow I have outlined the following seven challenges of HRD:
1. To think ahead of the CEOs and top
management in terms of business or mission, vision, values, goals and activities
of the organization;
2. To influence the thinking of the CEOs,
the Board and the top management with new ideas particularly in relation to
Talent Management issues;
3. To focus on developing leaders and
leadership competencies in the organization;
4. To promote continuous learning among
all employees and particular learning of seniors from their juniors and Gen Y;
5. To make the corporation entrepreneurial
and innovative by promoting a culture of innovations and proactive problem
solving;
6. To focus on talent, culture, values
and other variables that add to the enhancement of Intellectual capital of the corporations;
and
7. To restructure their roles and the
roles of others in the corporation by undertaking OD and self renewal or HRD
audit and such other activities that reposition them and others or effective functioning.
The task
before HRD Managers and HRD profession is daunting. Our colleges and Management
schools are responding to some extent. However they lack competencies to cater
to this important task of taking HRD spirit forward. Everyone is doing his best
both good and bad. If we leave things to happen on their own they may not happen.
To take this
forward and o achieve the glorious mission with which we founded the Human Resources
Development Movement we need committed people who understand HRD in the right
perspective and carry out various HR activities skilfully. We need therefore
thousands of HRD Missionaries.
With a
desire to create at least a thousand such HRD Missionaries in the next three to
few years and sow seeds for several thousands of HRD Missionaries, I am
starting this Foundation called as HRD Missionaries Foundation (HRDMF). The
first activity of this Foundation is to prepare a thousand HRD Missionaries.
All my books
and writings in the last couple of decades since I have first written the HRD Missionary
are focused on HRD skills and how to do things in the HRD missionary way. The
books deal with topics like:
1. Competency mapping
2. Designing and Managing HR systems
3. Performance Management
4. 360 Degree feedback and Leadership
Development
5. Organization Development, Self
renewal and Institution Building
6. Assessment and Development centres
7. Climate and Culture Surveys
8. HRD at National Level and the Future
of HRD
9. HRD Audit and HRD Score Card 2500
10. Experiential Learning and Development
I have devoted my life to work on these themes and the underlying theme
in all these books and recent articles and seminar talks is to build the 3Cs. I
am convinced that there is no alternative to having “HRD Missionaries” or HRD
Managers who take HRD as a Mission in their life. I have defined Missionary
managers as mission driven. Their goals are not personal but more social and
community related. They are highly driven by their goals, and there is an
element of sacrifice involved in what they do. Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa,
Dr Varghese Kurien, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Ila Bhatt, Ravi Matthai, and Vikram
Sarabhai are all examples of such missionaries. We need such missionaries in
HRD. They are needed in the society. I have a lot of faith in the modern youth
to take the Mission of HRD forward.
The Course of Study
To create a group of HRD Missionaries
who understand, interpret and possess the skills to promote genuine Human
resources Development in their organizing or the society I am launching this
venture of “Certified HRD Missionaries”.
As a part of this program I plan to give them a series of ten on-line certificate
programs on the above themes. The candidate will have to go through various books written
by me and others with similar spirit and objectives. They will be certified at
the end of each course on the basis of an examination to be conducted during
the contact sessions. There will be ten such courses and ten such certificates.
Each curse will be over a period of a month. There will be series of webinars
or alternate methods of on-line instruction. Each certifcte course will ahve around
ten to fifteen such web based interactions.
After the ten certificates they
will go through an assessment centre and also 360 Degree feedback. During the
course of their studies they may do various assignments. They will be certified
as “HRD Missionary” and called “Certified HRD Missionary”. The certification
will be based on a few days of stay at the end at Ahmedabad and observation by
me or my associates.
Candidates interested in learning
full time will come to Ahmedabad and work with me for a year. Full Time Missionaries in the making (MIMs) will need
to stay for a year at Ahmedabad and work with me closely. They have to take
care of their expenses. They will assist me in disseminating the concepts and
skills to others. As they mature it may be possible to take care of their
living with their own earnings. We may try and mobilise some Fellowships for
them.
Part time
MIMs are those registered for the HRD Missionaries program and will be required
to pay the fee. The fee will be Rs one lakh with about Rs 10,000 per
certificate. Some of the candidates who enrol and are unable to complete in one
year may do so in the second year or through remedial to be designed in future.
There will
be two to three day contact session every two months and the candidates will have
to bear their own expenses for travel and stay.
Sponsorships:
I welcome corporate
sponsorships for this program. This
program will be hosted as a part of an existing or new “Not for Profit
Organization” or an Educational Institution.
Registrations
Interested
candidates may register for the program by sending a detailed CV along with a
one page note on their reasons for wanting to do this program. There may be
telephonic interviews and selection on the basis of these interviews and
on-line tests.
Address for
correspondence
e-mail: tvrao@tvrao.com
web site: www.tvrls.com
603 Parshwa Building, Bodakdev, SG
Road (opp Rajpath club), Ahmedabad 380015, Gujarat, India
Tel: 91-79-26872718, 26870312
Preface to the second edition of HRD Missionary
HRD Missionary
(Preface to Second Edition of the book "HRD Missionary" available from www.tvrls.com or tvrls@tvrao.com)
In a recent
article titled “Why We Hate HR? Keith Haymmonds pointed out the following
reasons:
1. HR people are
n’t the brightest lot while the function requires bright people with business
acumen. The best and the brightest don’t go to HR. HR doesn’t tend to hire a
lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses. HR
people may not even know answers to basic questions like: who is their
company’s core customer? What challenges do they face? Who are the competitors?
What do they do well and what they don’t? Who are we? What do they do well and
not so well in their own company in relation to competitors and customers?
2. HR pursues
efficiency in lieu of value. They are more activity and target driven than out-
come and value driven. HR people can
readily provide the number they hired, the percentage of performance
evaluations they completed, the extent to which employees are satisfied with
their benefits, and the number of man-hours of training imparted etc. They
rarely link any of these with business performance.
3. HR is not
working for the employees but often to protect the organization against their own
employees by ensuring that data are collected to help organization meet labour
regulations and standards. HR people
pursue uniform policies against people who are heterogeneous and complex. HR departments’
bench-mark salaries department-by-department or function-by-function and job-by-job
against industry standards, keeping pay -- even that of stars-- within a narrow
band determined by competitors. They are un-willing to acknowledge
accomplishments that merit more than 4% companywide increase and bounce
performance appraisals back to managers.
4. HR people do not get the ear of the top
management for strategic issues. Whenever they bring strategic issues they are
ignored and are used for hiring, firing, organizing picnics, celebrations, etc.
According to one survey a number of organizations are likely to expand their outsourcing
of HR activities like learning and development, payroll, recruiting, health,
welfare and global mobility.
The article
concluded: “the problem, if you‘re an HR person is this: The tasks companies
are outsourcing—the adminsitrivia—tend to be what you’re good at. And what is
left isn’t exactly your strong suit.”
The above
observations are similar to those made
15 years before the above article appeared w lead to the book “HRD Missionary” In his
Foreword to the book, Mr. M.R.R Nair observed “The HRD departments are happy
doing “traditional” functions which get relegated as “Clerical or “Fire
fighting” tasks.” There are however
shining examples of organizations adopting clear HRD philosophies.... and
contributing to organizational growth and revival.
In a recent survey
by TVRLS, line managers from different organizations assessed the effectiveness
of the HRD function. The survey results when compared with a similar survey
results done in 1991 indicated a definite decline in the effective performance
of various roles. This study indicated a definite decline in the perceptions of
the effectiveness with which the various HRD functions are being performed as
perceived by the line managers. There was a definite decline in the effectiveness
with which the HRD roles are being performed as compared to a decade and a half
ago. The study concluded that, this is perhaps an indication of the raising
expectation of line managers from the HRD managers as well as a reflection of
the falling standards of performance of various HR Development activities.
Monitoring HRD implementation and conducting Human process research are the two
poorly performed functions across most organizations. Creating a development motivation among line
managers by organizing visits to other organizations for them was one of the
least attended activities. OD and self renewal activities were also among the
least effectively performed activities.
The study concluded that: 1. HRD
Managers need to recognize the stake holder expectations and understand the
overall business and strategic context of their function. As the expectations
from HRD function are changing and they are expected to perform more value
adding functions and activities. 2. The HRD function should focus on
intellectual capital generation activities and at the same time ensure a good
ROI on training and other interventions rather than merely facilitating
in-house training activities. 3. The HRD practitioners need to equip themselves
with capacity and competencies needed to build the HRD function as hands on,
proactive strategic partner with practical contributions to organizational
goals and performance effectiveness. 4. The HRD practitioners need to
strengthen their partnership and credibility with their stake holders by
involving them in policy making and communicating constantly.
Those who read the
first edition of the HRD Missionary written nearly twenty years ago would have
realised that these were anticipated in the book. The book argued for a
missionary approach to implementing HRD.
I began writing this book while I was on a consulting assignment with
Voltas and was working simultaneously with the Ministry of HRD to review NIEPA
(now NUEPA). I noticed during many of my consulting assignments the new role of
HRD created a decade and a half before the nineties was already getting to be
either routinised or politicised and was enjoying power. Part of the
complication came as these roles and departments were carved out of the
Personnel Departments and fell into the traps explained in the book. A few of
them like today were doing a marvellous job.
I felt strongly at that time that HRD has many difficulties: CEOs don’t
understand how to use HRD, HRD Managers themselves did not understand what they
are expected to do and many of them lacked even professional preparation to do
right things. This book along with another jointly edited by Mr. M R R Nair,
Director HR of SAIL and me (Excellence though HRD published by Tata McGrawHill)
were to serve as guides for those who
wanted to become HRD managers.
Since the time the
first edition of the HRD missionary was written went years ago a lot of things have
happened in this country and worldwide.
In India, opening up of the economy and liberalisation, creation of the
new economic environment, upcoming of IT and other services, emergence of many
young entrepreneurs in various fields etc. are some of the highlights. Indian Industry
has come a long way in the last two decades and Indian Industry has also become
a worldwide noticeable industry. Unlike the earlier years Indian products and
services got global prominence as all of them started competing in making
quality products and offer globally competitive services. There is a sea change
in the country. Speed became the order of the day as World Wide Web provided
all information and services at the door step. Many organizations started downsizing
in nineties and stabilising subsequently in terms of costs, speed, service
quality and other parameters. The last one decade has seen two unexpected
experiences (the dot com burst and the new economic crisis or worldwide
recession experienced in 2008-2009), have come out of it and continued to do
business as usual. Competition has become global. Technology has become cheaper
and accessible to many. Finances are available in plenty most of the time as
there are investors for good ideas and risk takers too. Talent had become more
scarce and expensive and hence become a strategic variable. HRD has come under
focus in the last one decade much more than before and competent and committed
HRD managers have become scarce. The
emergence a large number of consultants and consulting firms and management
schools specialising in HR are indictors of this HR boom in the last decade. Most
CEOs have recognised the importance of the spotting, procuring, nurturing,
retaining and d developing talent. HRD Managers had the difficult and
challenging task.
However as the opportunities grew HRD Managers
also started job hopping. This has affected partly the HRD profession. HRD
profession ended up as having two images-one in the eyes of themselves and the
CEOs and another in the eyes of the other employees. Employees depended on HRD
for their growth and maintenance. While HR administration was predictable and
any one can do well with little training the more difficult and challenging
task of nurturing and developing talent and creating a culture for effective
utilisation of talent is complex, long drawn, needs expert hep and sustained effort. It is easy to arrange transport and visas and
create good physical work conditions and predictable benefit schemes, it needs
different skills base to plan, manage and develop performance, and motivate
people, get their commitment to stay with the company, get them to enjoy work
and show commitment and at the same time grow in the company. It is here
professional expertise of HRD Managers and their sustained effort was required.
In many ways
though the HRD Missionary was written before the new economic environment it seems
to have anticipated the issues well. What has been said in this book remained truer
in the new economic Environment. There has been great appreciation of this book
from many quarters. Whenever I attempted to review it for re-writing it, I
found that there is very little I could add. There was not much new happening
that was not anticipated or explained in the first edition. So there was no
need for a second edition for almost twenty years.
When I began to
prepare the second edition now, I felt that many things remain the same and if
any the situation of HRD Managers in those days exists with same intensity. In
fact his seems to be the case all over the world as indicated by the article
“Why We Hate HR?” written from across the borders. The book therefore needed only an update as
the issues remain the same. The need for HRD Missionaries if any has only
increased as the number of non-performing HRD Managers has gone up as indicated
by the study by TVRLS. I have updated the same by adding a few more to the list
of HRD Interventions: 360 degree Feedback, Assessment and Development Centres,
HRD Audit, HRD Score card, Employee Engagement surveys. The argument that HRD Managers
should work with Missionary zeal and spirit remains the same. If any it has
become more necessary than before. CEOs still do not fully understand the
potential use of good HRD Managers. While they speak of Strategic HR and
strategic thinking, they seem to put HRD Managers to very little of strategic use.
It needs a higher degree of understanding, expectations on the part of the CEOs
as well as HRD Managers on what a good HRD Manager can do to transform an
organization. To do this HRD Managers need knowledge, commitment, and professional
competence.
I hope this book
will continue to inspire the new generation of HRD Managers and enables them to
do right things and things right. I have dropped the second part of the HRD
Missionary that gave a number of questionnaires as there are number of them and
are available in more detail from other sources like the HRD Score Card 2500
(Sage, Response Books, 2008) and Training Instruments in HRD and OD (by Udai
Pareek, Tata McGraw-Hill) etc.
In all my efforts
to pursue HRD, Dr Udai Pareek has been a constant source of encouragement, and a
companion. It was Udai who involved me in the L&T assignment at IIMA which
lead to the conceptualisation of HRD Function and department. I continue to
dedicate the second edition of this book to Udai.
T. V. Rao
January 21,
2010
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