HR Leadership

The panel discussion arranged by Dale Carnegie and Business world on 30th august 2006 was well received by the audience comprising of CEOs, senior HR heads and academicians.

It was more of a collective experience which the participants were able to share and harvest by absorbing in the best practices in each others organizations and perhaps even solutions to the issues that they may be encountering everyday ay the work place.

Some of the highlights

Value driven: an organization that has focused on core values goes a long way where as those who don’t, make a lot of splash but sink without notice very quickly. Its important today that people are respected individually and the extent of the well being of the organization has depends on its care quotient .Not just being profit driven but build on core values.

An interesting example was given of Ford motors which had a defective design that was proving fatal to the driver in accidents and it took nearly over 100 lives before the company sat up and confessed that something was seriously wrong.

Integrity + Attitude:

At TATA STEEL every individual stride on the fact that if one is honest, sincere and committed to the job, no one can take away the job. After all it’s the attitude towards work and its direction that really matters The HR has to be strong and have the courage to point out the issues to the top most authority which may be detrimental to the common interest of the organization not merely act as a” Yes Sir person”

Succession plan:

The HR has to regularly monitor the competencies of the individuals and develop a succession plan with the second line of leadership and motivated managers to keep the organization life line running under all given foreseen and unforeseen circumstances.

This keeps the firm moving despite all the chaos of attrition and talent issues

Networking Vs Politicking:

There should be a clear distinction between the two as a transparent environment without many hassles of hierarchy can induce good socialization between the employees and the scope for politicking can be squashed by enhanced dynamic communication channels. It’s very important to observe if an individual is building his/her personal brand or working as a team for the building of organizational well-being. It is usually the lack of trust and high insecure environments that breed politicking attitudes


SFA approach:

Survey + feedback + action approach basically deals with certain questions. Are the individuals happy and satisfied in their job responsibilities? Are they being treated well with respect? Is there a balance between compensation and promotions? The SFA approach makes the status of the organization visible apart from “automating” and being “creative “

A very interesting method was put forward by Dr. Srinivas from Sasken that they have the practice of sending fresh entrant to go around all over the work place and with a free hand, interviewing even the senior most people around as to why they value the work place and collect the data for analysis for their own understanding. This feedback system has helped in retention to a great extent.

Being passionate about customers:

To give a personalized approach to customers and making them feel important .Its important to give the message that “we care”. It’s important to take a pulse check regularly on the processes in the organization so that the quality of the delivery doesn’t get affected.

Fairness at work:

Individuals look for challenges and growth in a job. It’s essential for a healthy working system to treat people with equality and fairness. Often these factors take an organization a long way especially when it comes to recognizing the efforts and compensating it .Fairness in task allotment, measuring the performance, incentives and moreover for promotions

Fairness has two dimensional frameworks

a)Procedural justice – this is debatable as it distinctly marks an individual in yellow blue to fair paradigm. This is subjective and intangible

b)Distributable justice – This clearly demarcates what is high, average and low performance and more adaptable to current industry trend

Mr.Tariq from FedEx further added that in their company the HR policy has the value that the torch bearers have embedded into the system. The values start from the top to the bottom...Time bound grievance dealings then takes an escalation route if the decision was not satisfactory

Money Vs Talent:

Money is an important brand factor but doesn’t attract and retain talent in the practical sense. An organization dwelling on talent management has to actually focus on the challenges and vision of the company. The constant excitement as a learning organization besides the pride in the task and the team are the ingredients that retain the employees


Brains go like hearts where they are appreciated – Robert McNamara

Making it sticky:

Its become increasingly important to develop working groups as teams and then have a goal oriented approach which are achievable for the individuals to build their confidence in the challenges by breaking the goal into smaller and manageable task thus attaining small success that finally enables them to fulfill the larger goal and get aligned with their personal objectives .It has been observed that in most of the cases people derive high spiritual satisfaction in their job responsibilities. The idea that anything can be achieved as a team gets re-enforced. This acts as a cohesive force

To quote Swami Vivekananda “put water into your palm, the water will pour out. So have enough stick ness to see that the water remains”


Compassion -Classic strips example

At TATA STEEL the shop floor has a magnetic board which has red, yellow and green stripes .Each indicate the mood or health of the fellow worker. Looking at it the foreman/supervisor interacts with the workers and avoids any conflicts and altercation .It also enables the fellow workers to relate with compassion and care than be treated with a whip.

As Ms Vidhya from Centurian bank added that the HR should be approachable as a change maker. In her bank they don’t exceed maximum 5 minutes waiting time for either guests or any co-worker. They take the compassionate factor way beyond from work place to the family life.


Leadership training

Most of the organization lack in leadership orientation. Often it is found that employees are sent for training and this remains as factor adding to the resume to be benefited by next company where the employee seeks employment. Most of the time it doesn’t actually fetch any promotion nor have any implication within the place of work after the orientation. This area needs to be addressed and an action benefit plan must be in place before planning for such orientations.

Employee Engagement:

Often the question is asked how well do you have your employees engaged .This can be done by granulisation of GALLUP U12 to identify barriers ,analyze them, identify best practices and bring in those relevant to the work place

3 intricate factors that relate to employee engagement

a)No fear of reprisal
b)In touch programmes that goes beyond the point even before the employee joins the company
c)Making a positive touch point with the employee.


Conclusion: The HR perspective is changing from more as a transactional or a functional role to a more decision maker in the success of the organization. With the ever dynamic market conditions and global best practices now permeating to myriad business levels the HR team has to be one step ahead from these situational issues and that can happen via these kinds of forums and panel discussions that take away the mental blocks of organizational boundaries and look as a collective composite industry issue.

This thinking has to set in if INDIA looks at building global brands.