how can HR manager get top management's buy-in

Today we had a lecture on Employee Resourcing and we had done a small exercise in groups . As part of the exercise , we are required to give a speech to the company CEO in 3 mins time (in the elevator) on shifting to online testing as a suitable option for recruitment  and we are free to assume what ever data which might be important

Almost all the groups talked about the advantages in terms of reduced turnover ,better job-person fit , reduced hiring costs ,Employee satisfaction and all .

The final feedback from the faculty is that we missed on one very important data "NUMBERS" . Numbers is all that would be understood by the top management and that is what they are interested in and can understand . Even though we are free to assume data , none said that by shifting to new model of hiring we can save 30% or 10 lakhs in hiring costs . Instead every one resorted to the regular HR gyaan on satisfaction, bench marking etc

I heard the same feedback from industry persons who took guest lectures for us . So the bottom line is , if we want to succeed and be respected , its time to speak the business language and show the application of HR in attaining the business goals

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how can the reward system be improved

Just a passing thought on how to encourage the employees to be top performers

General practice in companies is to set targets at the beginning of the financial year ,conduct mid and final reviews(only time managers share the negative feedback) and group employees according to relative ratings .We also see that some where between the year most employees settle for average ratings (where most fall) and perform accordingly . But is it what the company looking for ??
so what i think is that instead of rating the employees at the year end , give each and every one of them top ratings (say 100 points ) in the beginning of the year . Now cut the points to the employees when ever employee is showing a deviant behavior and let the employee know about it (this solves one problem in conducting performance appraisals as most cases managers do not share negative feedback except in the final appraisal meeting). In this way every employee starts with 100 points and at the end ,based on relative ratings (who is able to retain the max score) would be getting the top rewards

Some important considerations are :
(1)there is a possibility that once employee falls below a certain rating compared to his colleagues , he may start loosing points more often putting less efforts as he feels he already lost his chance and worse may not be supporting the others in hope that they would also loose the points hence dragging the performance of every one down
This i feel can be resolved ,by having lee way in the system where in if the employee puts in efforts over and above what is required , option should be there to get extra points . so in this way , the employee can reach to the position from where he slid down

(2)If implemented in a team based scenario, the point system should be applied to the team as a whole instead of individuals

(3)The expectations or outcomes of the job and standards against which they are measured should be made very clear

(4) Every cut in the rating should be explained to the employee and there should be a proper grievance mechanism to address the concerns

As i mentioned this is just a passing thought and i felt its worth putting in words

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Role of recruitment in achieving business goals

Disclaimer : For simplicity sake ,i would avoid using jargons as far as possible :P

Most often we hear the cases where candidates in a job recruitment are selected for one strength , made to do the job which requires
completely new set of skills and finally conduct performance appraisal on those parameters which are not relevant to the job

The problem here is that there is no coordination between the skills looked by the person who hires, who manages the employees work and who designed the performance appraisal system. So the employee often finds in a conflicting situation where his manager asks him to do some thing which is not what his performance target says (this problem is severe when pay is tied with the performance ratings, which i wont be discussing now)

what can be effective solution:These are my learnings from my Employee Resourcing class, Readings and my personal views

What ever is envisioned by the top management should be percolated across all the levels in the organisation . So even the goals should follow the top-down approach . This in the sense , the top management generally decides how they want to position the company in the next few years , say for ex: the company wants to aggresively increase its market share for range of products

so lets see how various people and the processes in the organisation are impacted by this decission:

Top Management : Instead of saying they want to have max share in the market , they should clearly define whether they are looking at 50% share or 80% share and convey the same to the middlemanagement.From recruitment perspective , these are people who have good information on what it takes to be successful in the market few years down the line

Middlemanagement: These are the people who are in a position to influence the work force and have a good idea on customer needs . Being the managers , these people know what are the behaviors that helped their reportees to excel in their jobs and what behaviors leads to low performers. So when the goal of company is to increase the market share , the HR department should collect information from these people on characterstics of people which leads to this objective (good sales persons)

Lower level (sales people in our case) : The most important stake holders in the entire process. The incumbents in the job (especially those who are able to constantly clock good sales figures) and those mediocre people (who are recruited from other companies for star performance but slipped to mediocre sales here). Both these categories of people gives a good indication on what takes it to be succesful in the job and what are the processes that are hindering in their job ( Too much beuracracy,policies,incompetent managers,lack of training etc).

Once all the inputs are taken , the HR personnel should be able to identify all the qualifications(both technical & behavioral) required for the job

Now there are some elements in profile which cannot be trained like motivation to work. so these factors should be given more importance while recruiting . There are other factors like say specific technical knowlege which can be trained , these people can be recruited provided we have training facility and we have time to train them (Infy does this , where they clearly mention learnability is what they see and not what u already know )

Finally interviews should be done by stake holders : ie a HR manager is best person for checking the behavioral aspects where as reporting manager can check the technical skills . This step even though is followed , efforts should be made to make it fool prrof as a wrong hire costs the company a lot

well , started writing a small article but it snowballed and looks very scary now :P

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